Scariest moment in your life?

[Water Buffalo]

The moment before flying off a jet ski at 100km/h.

[smotherb]

Going through the horrors of my wife having cancer and a stoke--would much rather it was me. I have encountered several simple personal danger issues like so many of you have mentioned; they all pale in comparison.

[fasteddie]

using "fag" to reference a cig must mean you are not an American!!!!!

In America, we have many dangers!!!!

1. walking through Detroit

2. Black Friday

3. McD's 5-minutes before close

4. trying to find Canada on a map in less than 30-minutes

but i get you.......humans you create takes a special bond. you would die for this kid, so that's special.....

i would die for 100 big macs right now!!!! lol

I walked through Detroit, no problem. Mind you, about a week later they had the riots of '67 but my ship had sailed.

[Ghostnigel]

Not scary now, but going up in the glass fronted elevator of the CN Tower in Toronto, being squashed against the glass....it was a great view up there, but was glad to get back down....it was when it was the tallest in the world.

[fasteddie]

5yrs motorcycle couriering in London rain or shine, 6,000 miles a month, 6 months on 6 months in Thailand recovering.

[wow64]

Getting woken up half way through the night by a stunner you just met... But something is hitting me in the back..

This actually happened...

It was her elbow... I told myself that anyway.. Just run with it gone this far.

Edited December 1, 2015 by wow64

[ozyjon]

About to catch a wave in a Sydney beach, as i start to paddle

the wave rises to a great height, i look down and see the sand

at the bottom of the wave with about a foot of water, i frantically

paddle backwards to avoid being killed, it appeared on the news.

Surfing in the afternoon, same beach, when a dorsal fin follows

me on a wave, i was petrified, saw the white light (again) try not

to fall, ride the wave back to the beach, suddenly there was a

group of them, turned out to be dolphins, the heart was beating

again.

I was about 4 years old we lived in Luanda, Angola, my mum was

going to the next village, Benguella, there were some locals

guarding us and a few other people, as we approached the river

there were some colored women washing their clothes by the river

bank, a large crocodile took one lady right in front of us, it was a

horrible sight even 40 years later.

[csabo]

My wedding night. I just stared at the ceiling for 8 hours.

[csabo]

travelling between towns in a shared taxi in yemen. we stop for a quick break, the guy next to me hops out to buy food and his handgun falls onto the seat (everyone carries handguns/AK47s in yemen) the young boy travelling with him, aged about 10 years, picks it up and starts playing with it...

on a bus in the mountains in china, the edge of the road is a steep cliff into a gorge, no safety barriers, work being carried out on the mountainside above the road resulting in slippery mud all over the road. going round a corner the bus starts to slide towards the edge, i am certain we are going over and brace myself, the driver is very cool, he calmly steers us out of the slide.

It's all fun and games until...

[csabo]

Walking down some road in Pattaya at night a long time ago. Very scary parade, the alcoholics, junkies, sex addicts, hideous looking hookers, katoeys and other deviants.

What were you doing there...?...

What else??

[mikebell]

Getting my wheelchair stolen when I was having a piss in the bogs at wetherspoons.

Ramsbottom, great place to be in.

No it happened in Chorlton-cum-hardy.

Uncanny! My first residence as a married man was in Chandos Road Chorlton-cum-Hardy. I moved & lived 20+ years in Ramsbottom's Nuttall Park.

[KC 71]

Seeing the truth behind the lies !

[Dewey]

Hear the doc' saying that I have a tumor as big as my kidney (at 25 years old) and that I will lost the kidney the next day. Then hear 3 days later that it was cancerous...

But now 2 years later, still enjoying life in Thailand !

[Linky]

On holiday for a week. Returned to find 2 letters from the blood bank.

Opened the last letter first. Said soory they made a mistake, I do not have hepatitus C.

First letter of course said I did.

I'm glad I opened them in that order ?

[xylophone]

Some scary moments include: –

– Drinking homebrewed "white lightning" in a room in a desert camp in Libya (Sahara desert) along with a few other guys when the door burst open and an enraged Libyan soldier walked in with a loaded pistol and put it to my head. He then proceeded to shout and scream in Arabic constantly waving the pistol around and pressing against my temple. This went on for about 5 min (which seemed like an eternity) and I really thought he was going to pull the trigger.

After that we were rounded up by several soldiers, complete with pistols and rifles and kept under close guard (too close for comfort) for several hours whilst being pressured into signing a document on which we would plead guilty to selling alcohol to the Libyans (we didn't do that, but others did). We were freed several hours later after being kept under guard by the soldiers who had no problems with pointing the rifles and pistols at us– – very scary because they seemed unstable and unhinged.

– Flying into Tripoli airport from the desert on a Fokker Friendship only to be warned that we should adopt crash positions or similar because the front landing strut of the plane was faulty and might collapse on landing, this after circling what then passed for a control tower a few times, making the experience last quite a long time. At the point of coming into land, we noticed fire engines, trucks and jeeps lining the runway in readiness for our crash landing, which made the whole experience even scarier (we landed safely, but heavily because of the way the pilot put the plane down).

– Probably the scariest was when I was on a small rig supply boat well offshore of Nigeria and we were caught in a huge storm. If you have ever seen the movie "The Perfect Storm" then you will get a sense of how I felt because the waves were huge and this poor little boat was in danger of overturning because the bow would lift almost vertically, and even though the cabin doors were closed tightly, water was coming over the cabin and through the doors. The two Nigerian deckhands inside of the cabin were laying on the floor holding onto whatever they could and crying, and I was just hanging on to something hoping that I would come out of it alive. Absolutely terrifying and seemed to last forever, but in reality probably a couple of hours before it died down.

– Being a bit of a tear away in my youth, I was making some bombs out of weedkiller and sugar and filling some metal pipes with the mixture, then flattening the end of the metal pipes with a hammer. I had done several of these before the final one, when some of the mixture spilled out of the end and I casually brushed it away with the hammer, only to see it ignite!!!! So at any one time in the previous 15 or 20 times that I had made these bombs, I could have been blown up because the mixture (as is now known) was terribly unstable and could go off without warning. Never made any more after that and considered myself lucky to still be intact.

[xylophone]

May I ask your bombs intended use....?

You may.............two uses actually, one for blowing up old dead trees in the local forest and the other for blowing up old "bits and pieces" on the local rubbish dump.

Nothing sinister, just fun for a few tearaways like myself. Well I thought it was fun until the experience I described, and then considered myself lucky to be alive.

[Crazy chef 1]

Some scary moments include:

Drinking homebrewed "white lightning" in a room in a desert camp in Libya (Sahara desert) along with a few other guys when the door burst open and an enraged Libyan soldier walked in with a loaded pistol and put it to my head. He then proceeded to shout and scream in Arabic constantly waving the pistol around and pressing against my temple. This went on for about 5 min (which seemed like an eternity) and I really thought he was going to pull the trigger.

After that we were rounded up by several soldiers, complete with pistols and rifles and kept under close guard (too close for comfort) for several hours whilst being pressured into signing a document on which we would plead guilty to selling alcohol to the Libyans (we didn't do that, but others did). We were freed several hours later after being kept under guard by the soldiers who had no problems with pointing the rifles and pistols at us very scary because they seemed unstable and unhinged.

Flying into Tripoli airport from the desert on a Fokker Friendship only to be warned that we should adopt crash positions or similar because the front landing strut of the plane was faulty and might collapse on landing, this after circling what then passed for a control tower a few times, making the experience last quite a long time. At the point of coming into land, we noticed fire engines, trucks and jeeps lining the runway in readiness for our crash landing, which made the whole experience even scarier (we landed safely, but heavily because of the way the pilot put the plane down).

Probably the scariest was when I was on a small rig supply boat well offshore of Nigeria and we were caught in a huge storm. If you have ever seen the movie "The Perfect Storm" then you will get a sense of how I felt because the waves were huge and this poor little boat was in danger of overturning because the bow would lift almost vertically, and even though the cabin doors were closed tightly, water was coming over the cabin and through the doors. The two Nigerian deckhands inside of the cabin were laying on the floor holding onto whatever they could and crying, and I was just hanging on to something hoping that I would come out of it alive. Absolutely terrifying and seemed to last forever, but in reality probably a couple of hours before it died down.

Being a bit of a tear away in my youth, I was making some bombs out of weedkiller and sugar and filling some metal pipes with the mixture, then flattening the end of the metal pipes with a hammer. I had done several of these before the final one, when some of the mixture spilled out of the end and I casually brushed it away with the hammer, only to see it ignite!!!! So at any one time in the previous 15 or 20 times that I had made these bombs, I could have been blown up because the mixture (as is now known) was terribly unstable and could go off without warning. Never made any more after that and considered myself lucky to still be intact.

Friend of mine lost 4 fingers whilst building such bombs at the age of 12...

[NoshowJones]

Walking down some road in Pattaya at night a long time ago. Very scary parade, the alcoholics, junkies, sex addicts, hideous looking hookers, katoeys and other deviants.

What were you doing there...?...

You mean you don't know?

[NoshowJones]

Some scary moments include: –

– Drinking homebrewed "white lightning" in a room in a desert camp in Libya (Sahara desert) along with a few other guys when the door burst open and an enraged Libyan soldier walked in with a loaded pistol and put it to my head. He then proceeded to shout and scream in Arabic constantly waving the pistol around and pressing against my temple. This went on for about 5 min (which seemed like an eternity) and I really thought he was going to pull the trigger.

After that we were rounded up by several soldiers, complete with pistols and rifles and kept under close guard (too close for comfort) for several hours whilst being pressured into signing a document on which we would plead guilty to selling alcohol to the Libyans (we didn't do that, but others did). We were freed several hours later after being kept under guard by the soldiers who had no problems with pointing the rifles and pistols at us– – very scary because they seemed unstable and unhinged.

– Flying into Tripoli airport from the desert on a Fokker Friendship only to be warned that we should adopt crash positions or similar because the front landing strut of the plane was faulty and might collapse on landing, this after circling what then passed for a control tower a few times, making the experience last quite a long time. At the point of coming into land, we noticed fire engines, trucks and jeeps lining the runway in readiness for our crash landing, which made the whole experience even scarier (we landed safely, but heavily because of the way the pilot put the plane down).

– Probably the scariest was when I was on a small rig supply boat well offshore of Nigeria and we were caught in a huge storm. If you have ever seen the movie "The Perfect Storm" then you will get a sense of how I felt because the waves were huge and this poor little boat was in danger of overturning because the bow would lift almost vertically, and even though the cabin doors were closed tightly, water was coming over the cabin and through the doors. The two Nigerian deckhands inside of the cabin were laying on the floor holding onto whatever they could and crying, and I was just hanging on to something hoping that I would come out of it alive. Absolutely terrifying and seemed to last forever, but in reality probably a couple of hours before it died down.

– Being a bit of a tear away in my youth, I was making some bombs out of weedkiller and sugar and filling some metal pipes with the mixture, then flattening the end of the metal pipes with a hammer. I had done several of these before the final one, when some of the mixture spilled out of the end and I casually brushed it away with the hammer, only to see it ignite!!!! So at any one time in the previous 15 or 20 times that I had made these bombs, I could have been blown up because the mixture (as is now known) was terribly unstable and could go off without warning. Never made any more after that and considered myself lucky to still be intact.

George Jones. White Lightning.

[xylophone]

Some scary moments include: –

– Drinking homebrewed "white lightning" in a room in a desert camp in Libya (Sahara desert) along with a few other guys when the door burst open and an enraged Libyan soldier walked in with a loaded pistol and put it to my head. He then proceeded to shout and scream in Arabic constantly waving the pistol around and pressing against my temple. This went on for about 5 min (which seemed like an eternity) and I really thought he was going to pull the trigger.

After that we were rounded up by several soldiers, complete with pistols and rifles and kept under close guard (too close for comfort) for several hours whilst being pressured into signing a document on which we would plead guilty to selling alcohol to the Libyans (we didn't do that, but others did). We were freed several hours later after being kept under guard by the soldiers who had no problems with pointing the rifles and pistols at us– – very scary because they seemed unstable and unhinged.

– Flying into Tripoli airport from the desert on a Fokker Friendship only to be warned that we should adopt crash positions or similar because the front landing strut of the plane was faulty and might collapse on landing, this after circling what then passed for a control tower a few times, making the experience last quite a long time. At the point of coming into land, we noticed fire engines, trucks and jeeps lining the runway in readiness for our crash landing, which made the whole experience even scarier (we landed safely, but heavily because of the way the pilot put the plane down).

– Probably the scariest was when I was on a small rig supply boat well offshore of Nigeria and we were caught in a huge storm. If you have ever seen the movie "The Perfect Storm" then you will get a sense of how I felt because the waves were huge and this poor little boat was in danger of overturning because the bow would lift almost vertically, and even though the cabin doors were closed tightly, water was coming over the cabin and through the doors. The two Nigerian deckhands inside of the cabin were laying on the floor holding onto whatever they could and crying, and I was just hanging on to something hoping that I would come out of it alive. Absolutely terrifying and seemed to last forever, but in reality probably a couple of hours before it died down.

– Being a bit of a tear away in my youth, I was making some bombs out of weedkiller and sugar and filling some metal pipes with the mixture, then flattening the end of the metal pipes with a hammer. I had done several of these before the final one, when some of the mixture spilled out of the end and I casually brushed it away with the hammer, only to see it ignite!!!! So at any one time in the previous 15 or 20 times that I had made these bombs, I could have been blown up because the mixture (as is now known) was terribly unstable and could go off without warning. Never made any more after that and considered myself lucky to still be intact.

George Jones. White Lightning.

Yep, was potent stuff and the guys that made it said it was 180 proof alcohol............never had anyone go blind drinking it but did throw up a few times from "bad" batches I suspect, or maybe just too much of it!!

In addition we made bitter, lager, other strange beers and I even managed to make my version of "Tia Maria".

[giddyup]

When the roof blew off the house during Cyclone Tracy, Darwin 1974.

[simon43]

Riding my motorbike on a dark, unlit country road in Leicestershire.

I see a single headlight approaching fast from the other direction.

The road edge was broken and bumpy - so I positioned my bike near to the centre of the road (no centre white line) and assumed the approaching motorbike would pass me safely.

As we neared close to each other, with a combined speed of maybe 160mph, I suddenly realised that the approaching motorbike was not a motorbike, but a speeding car with it's offside headlight broken! There was about 1.5 metres of vehicle width where I thought there was none...

I swerved at the last second, feeling the car door brush my kneecap as it sped passed.

Took me about half an hour to stop shaking

[saakura]

Walking down some road in Pattaya at night a long time ago. Very scary parade, the alcoholics, junkies, sex addicts, hideous looking hookers, katoeys and other deviants.

What were you doing there...?...

You mean you don't know?

It was around 1995 and i had just completed some work at the Mapthaphut Industrial Estate. My company had put me up at some hotel in Pattaya. I was taking a walk to see the sights but it was really freaky.

[colinneil]

Worst moment in my life was when i came out of a coma and my wife telling me you have broken your back and spinal cord.

Then realising i would never walk again, yes frightening.

[luk AJ]

I was with my wife in Russia, she got sick, hospital asked from where we came. She said Thailand and the next moment she was locked up in quarantine. It was an old Sovjet hospital, disgusting. My wifes condition getting worse by the hour. Nothing I could do. I could see the panic in her eyes. I had to buy a pillow and sheets, you cannot immagine the hellhole. I tried to be as close as possible staying at the outside fenced window at minus20c. I had contacted the Embassy but in such moments time creeps forward. After 4 days I could transfer her to another hospital. Better but still horror. Every night she suffered severe head ache and fever. It took 2 weeks to recover.the doctors never found the cause...

[smotherb]

Scariest moments, yeah, had some.

1. Christmas eve, Washington, D.C., I was riding shotgun in my buddy’s old Olds when we slid off an icy road into a ravine. The car rolled over and over until it hit a rock; then it toppled end to end landing upside down, facing in the opposite direction, on a rock. I was not wearing a seatbelt, so I was thrown into the backseat and ended up on the floor. The roof over the right front passenger seat, where I had been seated, was crushed into the seats.
2. D.C. again, late at night, I had spent my last dollar on a beer, so was walking home. I felt a hard object in the back of my head; then a voice said, “Give me all your money.” I told him I had no money; whereupon he whipped me across the back of the head with that hard object, and said, “I’ll blow your brains out if you don’t hand over your money.”
3. In Vietnam, I was a USAID adviser for a small village in Khien Giang province. The third night there, a group of VC gentlemen burst into my hooch and beat me about the belly with their AKs. I spoke Vietnamese, so I told them I was a civilian agriculture and hygiene adviser, a non-combatant there to help the villagers. The village chief came in screaming to try to save me. They ransacked everything I had looking for weapons, I was armed with a red Swiss Army knife.
4. Water skiing on the Song Be River out of Saigon, the tips of my skis got caught under the bottom lip of the jump; I was dragged up the ramp on my belly and thrown against the piling before I let go and landed in the muddy riverbank. Instantaneous infection in my friction burns from the sewerage gave me eighteen days in the burn ward at 3^rd Field Hospital with busted ribs, shoulder and arm—nah, forget about this one, I wasn’t scared.
5. “Americans, god damn,” I heard in Vietnamese in a Saigon bar. It was an ARVN Ranger Theiu Uy and his sergeant; they were both drunk. The officer kept shouting derogatory things about Americans in Vietnamese. So, I told him in Vietnamese to look at his uniform, his side arm, his boots, his housing, his vehicle, his training; and asked, “Where did they all come from?” He pressed the nozzle of his .45 against my forehead; “You mean like this sidearm?” He said in perfect English.
6. Back in the States on a below zero (-28F) snowy January day, I was canoeing on the Pau Pau River with my old friend Orrin. The fast running water was icing on the edges before we hit some rocks and our canoe overturned. My heavy clothes were dragging me down; I struggled for an eternity to reach the icy bank. Orrin made it too, but now what do we do? We were in the middle of nowhere; no buildings, no roads, no fences, no flint or dry matches, no dry wood and we were soaked. Hypothermia at those temperatures was a matter of minutes, not hours.
7. A group of us who worked in Iran decided we could have a great time on the Lar River with truck tire inner tubes. The Lar was quite turbulent as it came down from high up on Towchal. I had a great tube-raft, cargo netting to hold two large tubes together—one for me, one for my cooler. As we went through the rapids, fewer and fewer tubers were willing to keep at it. Two other yayhoos and I kept going until my raft was overturned. My ankle was caught in the netting and I was pushed underneath the tubes, couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t get back on top.

Well, that takes care of my twenties. If you want to hear about my thirties, forties, fifties, sixties and seventies; I’ll tell you. However, none of those incidents can begin to match the fear I felt when I thought I would lose my wife.

[mca]

Dodgy stomach, upcountry petrol station bogs, no water gun, no water in the trough, no tap, no bog roll. The horror

[nozzer614]

Joining Thaivisa

[eldragon]

When I was 12 and out camping with the Scouts, a Sheriff showed up and informed us a young boy in my hometown had been murdered, and the killer was still on the loose. Did not sleep well that night.

First time I slept with a Thai girl and went to bed wondering if maybe, somehow she was actually a ladyboy is a close second.

[GOLDBUGGY]

Yeah! I Hear Ya!

I have worked in areas all my life full of dangerous critters. Walked by a Black Mamba Snake once which I didn't see it, who was only a foot away from me and waist high, but lucky for me he was asleep. Had a Cobra chase me once and to my surprise he was moving faster than I can run. I highly don't recommend throwing something at him. Worked in places where Scorpions were more plentiful than Coach Roaches, and you had to be careful were you put your hands all the time, or you will get stung. Or deadly snakes that look exactly like the sand around them, and bury there bodies in the sand to hide from you, except his head.

But I never had the Guts to go in and watch my baby being born. This is on the top of my list of the things I don't want to do. So more power to you for going in.