Went looking for mushrooms in the woods with some friends. A few meters off a trail we found a rusty metal pipe sticking out of the ground. Looked like someone threw some chemical waste out. We tried to open it, to pull it out, we put a stick in (I get sweaty palms writing this down right now) and smelled the strange liquid. It didn’t work so we went home. One friend send the location to the local waste authority. They called a day later, it was a phosphorus bomb dropped by the British during WW2, it was still active and had to be defused. Fuck me! This was not deep in the woods, people walked by in plain sight for decades.
Omigod.
The biggest?
That time we dodged a Scud ballistic missile. I don’t mean we saw one get intercepted or had one land nearby and just watched. We actively dodged it.
So there we were in Iraq in 2003. We’re outside Al Najaf and the battle for the city is raging. There are artillery rounds going both ways, planes dropping ordnance, and thousands of civilians leaving the city on foot. Mostly we ignored them because we had a job to do. But one guy turns around suddenly and starts walking back into the city. Several of us noticed him and started asking the others around us, “is he?.. Is he pacing? Did he turn around just to the side of our position?”
The consensus quickly formed that, yup, he was walking in a way to count his steps and get a distance measurement. Our leaders called up the chain and a plan quickly formed. If it was nothing then there wouldn’t be an interruption to the battle anyways. The second the sun was down we moved out to a new position in complete light discipline. Nobody was allowed any light but what they could get through a night vision device. Not even the IR flashlights and markers.
In our new position everything was normal until around 0300 when a huge explosion went off right in our previous fighting position. They had indeed launched a SCUD based on one man pacing a distance measurement, and they were accurate. If we hadn’t moved that night then I wouldn’t be here.
So we dodged a Scud Missile.
Holy shit dude.
I’m a fan of your war stories. The amount of shit you’ve survived must put you on par with chuck norris or something.
It was definitely a year that contained a decade, but I’m far from being the one to see the most stuff. And I certainly wasn’t a lone wolf. Well except for that one time… Lol I jest, we never did anything alone.
Nah, with Chuck Norris, it’s usually the missiles that do the dodging.
With chuck norris it’s actually probably a lgbtq or minority that needs to do the dodging.
Chuck Norris is a piece of shit
Are we talking about the same Chuck Norris?
No, we are not.
I am talking about an internet meme
You are talking about a real person, who is probably old by now.Yeah, we’re talking about the same chuck norris.
Unfortunately we memed a douchebag back in the day, but the good news is you can stop.
High school girlfriend was a bit intense and told me she wanted me to marry her and that she wanted children. I was 16 at the time. I was terrified by that, because you know, 16, and she got mad at my nervousness. She dumped me a week later and wouldn’t you know it, married less than a year out of high school with now 3 kids.
I went on to get my degree, move far far away, get a much better job and a much better partner. I think back to who I would have been if teenage me had let myself be pressured into that. Small town, working at the gas station or pizza joint, supporting 3 kids…
God, I feel this. One of my uni girlriends was similar. I was attracted to bad women or women with problems, lol. Then I fell in love with a really nice guy who was like, the polar opposite of everyone I had dated prior. Fast forward years later, and we’re married and finally starting to think about having kids. Feels closer to the right time :)
I love the Americans in this thread answering the question literally
Russian military draft.
How did you do it? Must be crazy to look back at it with all the things that happened in mind.
A lot of moving around, not knowing what city or country I will be at next week.
Was a wild ride for sure, glad I was fortunate and persistent enough to find a place I can tentatively call home again ❣️
I’m glad you made it!
Nice try, KGB
Haven’t told anyone this and it’s peanuts compared to other stories, but I was driving home the other night and had to stop quickly at a red light. I didn’t “have” to but it was that perfect timing of “do I squeeze through and the guy turning left shakes his fist, or do I stop (noone behind or in front of me) and just chill.”
So I stopped, and holy shit an 8’ square tube of steel I’d had strapped to the rack of my truck launched itself into the intersection, clattering to the ground 30’ away.
Nobody noticed. Not the lady in the lane to my right, not anyone driving cross traffic (they all started driving by it like it wasn’t there) and not even the guys coming towards me turning left, who did drive over it.
I could have killed someone. If there had been a car in front of me I could have been the villian in a real life horror movie… Like that video of the guy who’s mother gets killed in the passenger seat beside him when a brick comes through the windshield.
I don’t believe in God. But fuck me, if I never win a lottery ticket or raffle or even a coin toss again I’ll still consider myself damn fucking lucky.
Stupid. And there wasn’t a reason for it… I checked those straps before I left that day. Something about the rain and I don’t know what caused it to come loose. But I didn’t have to be carrying that thing around. I was just lazy and storing it there until I could use it.
I’m sorry to everyone. And I’m so lucky noone was hurt.
Shortly after getting my driver’s license, I stupidly merged onto a road with a 40 mph speed limit without looking left.
A car was coming right towards my driver’s side door. The driver of the other car made their brakes squeal (this was before ABS). Right before they would have hit me and probably killed me (this was before airbags), they released their brakes, swerved around me, and kept going.
It was some really impressive driving, and it likely saved my life.As an EU immigrant, left the UK after the Leave vote but before Brexit and Covid.
It’s not a bullet but more like a whole lot of bullets.
Mind you, most of it was entirely predictable back then.
I moved to UK after school to get a university degree. Graduated in 2014, and despite having multiple interviews, had to move back home due to not being able to land a job. Eventually got employed elsewhere, and boy did it turn out pretty well compared to what would have happened if I stayed.
Can you elaborate on some of the bullets dodged? Not from that part of the world and I’ve only heard of the economic ramifications. I’d be curious to hear about it in greater detail, if you have the time!
The country moved to the far-right, the Industry I was working in - Finance - lost 40,000 jobs, Britain got general Economic stagnation worse than the EU, the value of the British Pound fell significantly against the Euro after the vote (fortunatelly I moved all my savings out of Pound-denominated assets evern before the Leave vote, so I personally was alright) all of the sudden as an EU immigrant you became a second class citizen with lots of extra hassle for living there (inside the EU, EU immigrants have the same rights as the locals, so when Britain left, they lost that), significant decay and problems with their National Health Service, really bad mishandling of COVID (especially in the beginning) and so on.
In some ways the place turned into a mini Trump’s-America, only with the extra nastiness of already being very classist country with very low social mobility from the start and a heavy “know your place” mindset - which is extra hard for immigrants because Britons see themselves as superior to all foreigners but Americans, so “Immigrant” is the lowest “social class” for them - and without the upsides that American has (mainly space and scale, natural resources and at least in some places good weather).
Mind you, most of those things are trends predating Brexit which were heavilly accelerated by it.
12 ga, not sure if slug or shot.
Gun was held to my head for 20-30 mins during some gang stupidity involving a family member not wanting to leave a party I was supposed to pick them up from. I left, came back and the place was crawling with police and EMS. The same gun, held by the same guy was used to shoot another person in the face.
I ended up having to give statements, got subpoenaed, and myself, family, and friends being threatened by same gang for a number of years.
Large outlet center on interstate 40 in North Carolina between two metropolitan areas needed a Spanish translator. I applied and interviewed, having spent significant time working IT jobs in South America. They asked if I spoke Mexican. I said no, I am working proficient in Spanish. They said sorry, they were looking for someone who spoke Mexican.
Oh I know a guy who speaks Mexican. This cop. (3s)
I was watching some amature tree removal people rig a pulley system to a tree that partially fell over from about 50 yards away with a few other people. They hooked it up to a pickup truck and drove forward at full power. The pulley snapped and landed behind me on an incline a fraction of a second later. I felt the wind from it go over my head and sort of visually noticed it go by in the same way someone would notice a cannonball go clear across a field in an instant. It was most certainly going fast enough and weighed enough to completely demolish my skull and everything inside. Very surreal, we opted to leave them to their work after that.
Out of curiosity, where were you in relation to the direction the truck was driving? Was it driving towards you?
No, perpendicular. We were on a path out of the way. I’m not sure why it came our direction, but I remember more than one pulley and the tree was propped against a building sort of in our direction.
Realistically, I’d say my worst in recent memory was nearly getting smoked by a red light runner at some stroad intersection. Only thing that saved me was my own incompetence; I believe I was dicking around on my phone waiting for my turn at the light, and that hesitation delayed me just enough to not get wrecked.
The one I’m more likely to tell people in a casual conversation is nearly accepting a job as a professional Salesforce consultant.
Almost went to college for art, decided last minute to do engineering instead. Still ended up getting heavily involved in art later in life because I had the financial freedom from tech to do so
