Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

These arent near death experiences, they are experiences that brought you near to death.

A near death experience is what you take the hit, die or come medically close to death then return. Often with insights of what happens on death.

A close shave is a close shave, and it can be insightful in its own way in terms of teaching us the value of caution and making use of life's gift.

@Orlanth, why does it have to be so specifically defined? Does it really matter what we consider a near death experience?

throw my 2 cents in, when I was young, probably 5-7 years old (hell i dont know, I was just really young, check lion kings release date probably help date event), I nearly drowned in a relatives' pool. I remember jumping off of the edge into the underground pool (5-6 feet deep where I jumped, 10 feet at deepest) ... I was trying to land on the back of an inflatable simba, from the lion king that had just been released. Needless to say, I hit it, bounced off, hit my head on the side of the pool and sank. I remember "waking up" (is what it felt like, being in the bottom of the pool felt like eternity and like it was a dream..) in the bottom of the pool looking up at the sunlight and images of people around the edge of the pool, and my brother diving in to get me. Apparently nobody saw me fall in and hurt myself but him. He dragged me out and that's all I remember. I remember being totally hopeless/helpless looking up from the bottom of the pool. sucked.

Shortly after getting my motorcycle and license for it I was driving in from work, and at a rural lighted intersection going 45mph, a guy driving a semi decided he had time to turn left across my lane.

I braked, locked the back, started to skid sideways quickly towards the rear tires of the trailer, then released and put the gas on just in time to not high-side crash and missed the rear of the trailer by barely 3 feet.

Pulled off to the side immediately and properly gave him an obscene gesture as he looked back in shock then collected myself.

Motorcycle safety and training course I had taken prior to getting the license and bike just saved my life.

I was 17 and I was skiing in Vermont with my family. I'm a fairly confident skier, having started at the age of three and done most of my skiing in the Alps and Rockies, and if any of you have skied New England you'll know what a vast difference there is between the mountains out west and those in Vermont. So I was cruising along hitting all the jumps that I could, until I hit one that happened to have a 30+ foot drop on the other side. I would have landed it okay if I hadn't come down on a patch of ice, which caused my knees to give out, and my unhelmeted head to hit the ice. I got knocked unconscious and ended up with a skull fracture, a cerebral contusion and some inter-cranial bleeding. As luck would have it I came out of it with no permanent damage, but any slight variations could have left me a vegetable or dead.

On the plus side I traumatized my mom's boyfriend who was watching the entire thing happen. Never liked the guy.

^Silver Lining sorta guy huh?

 Norn King wrote:
@Orlanth, why does it have to be so specifically defined? Does it really matter what we consider a near death experience?

Because its two completely different things.

A Near Death Experience is a form of spiritual phenomena, a near miss /close shave is a time when looking back there was a high probability of not surviving.

Its like saying 'anyone been shot?' and it turning into a discussion on favourite guns a person has shot with. Completely different things.

 Orlanth wrote:

A Near Death Experience is a form of spiritual phenomena, a near miss /close shave is a time when looking back there was a high probability of not surviving.

I think by your very definition you cannot exclude the potential of anything that has been given in this thread as a near-death experience, other than by virtue of comparison to your own personal experiences.

Given that the thread has taken what I believe was the OP's intended course, I think the issue is fairly unimportant.

my best fried got hit by a car, the first thing he said when he woke up was "hey, mum, is my 40k box still in my bag"
as I was the only one with him I called the ambulance and his parents, the first thing he said to me the next time I saw him was "did you grab my chaos lord? it was in my pocket and I cant find it" I went back to the street and found it on the ground, still in one piece.

It would take an entire page of I had to go through all my near death experience. A near death experience is Nature way of telling you how close someone is being stupid.

Dang, there's some scary stuff in here. I've had a few close shaves but nothing on the level of what some of you have said. I guess I've just been lucky because I have done some dumb stuff but it's never actually gone bad on me(might be a good thing because at the moment my career plan involves Naval Aviation).

I guess the closest that's ever happened to me was when I was in about 7-8th grade and was riding an ATV (4 wheeled dirt bike for those who don't know) around the country roads while my family went camping for the weekend. Long story short I went around a turn way to fast and my ATV dropped off the trail, which was elevated a foot or two from the side of the road. Somehow it launched itself into the air and did a flip, so I ended up upside down under it. I swear this thing felt 10 feet off the ground but I'm sure it was only a couple feet. I just let go and hit the dirt while the ATV comes down sideways about a foot from my head and starts rolling away.

I can't say what kind of damage that would have done, but if I had either held on or the thing had landed a foot closer I don't think I would have been a very happy man, especially because my parents had no idea where I was or when I'd be back and I was in the middle of nowhere. To this day I never told them about it

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/08/12/211324316/brains-of-dying-rats-yield-clues-about-near-death-experiences