Different experiences conjure different emotional responses in every individual. This thread is for the terrifying moments that you have experienced in your life. You could have been terrified in a good sense, like seeing your child born or graduating or saying "I do." Or you might have been terrified in a bad sense, like you thought your life was in imminent danger. Either way it is likely to be something that you strongly remember. Also, because it is equally as interesting, feel free to share something that didn't terrify you that surprised you because maybe, looking back on it, you really should have been scared shitless!

Moments that have terrified me into thinking "this is it, my life will very soon be over"

-Getting charged by a hippopotamus
-Looking down the barrel of a loaded shotgun
-The moments just before I bungee jumped the first time
-Snorkeling in/through a kelp forest
-Leaving my bush camp in the Okavango Delta in the middle of the night for a little stroll (by far the dumbest thing ever)
-Severe turbulence on an airplane
-Hearing a lion's roar
-Buying condoms for the first time
-Buying a home pregnancy test when I was 16 cause my high school gf thought she was pregnant (she got her period after I bought it thank god, never had to use it)
-Getting my first tattoo, a heart with that same girl's name on it (since covered up), also when I was 16
-Stumbling upon an animal in the woods hidden in some brush, I thought a bear was going to jump out and eat me, but instead a huge turkey flew over my head
-Narrowly escaping being mauled to death by a honey badger when I scared one by trying to take a picture of it in the dark while it was raiding a trash can outside my tent
-Being in a car at speeds over 100 mph
-Close encounters with solifugids/camel spiders
-Out in the jungle at night three things would terrify me, one was losing my bearings when off-trail, two was having armadillos run into my legs, and three was having kinkajous drop fruit on my head

Moments that didn't terrify me but maybe should have

-The moments before a skydive
-Being licked by a captive-raised adult cheetah
-Owning rattlesnakes whose cages (albeit locked) were next to my bed
-Being chased by a troop of angry monkeys
-Being chased by a large male seal on land
-Being in a rainforest swamp with lots of venomous snakes around (especially fer-de-lances)

2/10/2010 2:09:14 AM

I can't compete with those. The closest I've come is having a deer bolting perpendicular to the highway with about 0.5sec to see him and react. How he missed running into me I have no idea.

I have been skydiving though and I was pretty much relegated to thinking "well, if I am going to go at least it will be a fun ride."

2/10/2010 4:21:06 AM

Couple instances in Korea....more notably when they fired a missile over Japan, tested a nuke, and one other time. Can't really get into it though.

2/10/2010 6:30:01 AM

OP:

Dude, do you live in the jungle or what?!

2/10/2010 7:42:56 AM

great thread, expect interesting responses.

2/10/2010 7:44:49 AM

I had to look up what a kinkajous was, and I have to say I would have kept one as a pet if it jumped on me and named it Stanley.

2/10/2010 8:11:44 AM

You listed all these crazy things but

Quote :

"-Being in a car at speeds over 100 mph"

Really? I did this on the way to work today.

2/10/2010 8:28:50 AM

here's my top 3.

- Sophomore year of college I got my gf pregnant, but she ended up miscarrying.

- Waking up one morning at my grandparents' house in India (we're from the sticks), walking outside to take a piss in the outhouse and almost stepping on a king cobra. It reared up and opened it's hood just like you always see in movies and shit. I knew if i made any sudden movements, the motherfucker would bite me and i'd be dead because i'm probably 50 miles from a hospital and wasn't nearly as badass as my grandfather who survived king cobra bites on two occasions without any modern medicine or doctors. I slowly backed away, and then my uncle walked around the other side of the house and motioned me to not make any noise, and he came up behind it and grabbed it by the head and threw it in a firepit where he had been burning some trash.

- cdubya and I were at Arapahoe basin a few years back and got onto an area that was over our heads.

Cliffs.
Trees.
Large rocks.
And a retardedly steep grade.
One wrong enough move and you'd be deader than sonny bono.

Somehow we made it.

2/10/2010 8:30:53 AM

- Senior year of high school I did a 360 on I-485 in Charlotte after hitting an ice patch. I had a Ford Explorer at the time and was lucky it didn't flip/roll.

- I would say skydiving, but I was honestly just incredibly excited about that.

- I was in Boy Scouts in middle/high school and we went caving. I'm not claustrophobic, but it's pretty scary being in a cave crawling through very small openings aptly titled "dead man's tunnel" or something along those lines.

2/10/2010 8:55:56 AM

Waking up in a hospital having no memory of why I was there for awhile was probably the scariest thing I can remember. I had fallen asleep driving back to my parent's house really late at night in HS my senior year. I was taking back roads and after falling asleep I had gone around a downhill curve and hit a few trees.

I still don't remember anything about the accident, or the fact that sometime within ~30mins of the accident, I crawled out of the car, walked to the closest house (only about 1/4 mile) with broken bones and covered in blood, and told them I didn't know what happened but I needed an ambulance. I remember leaving my gf(now my wife)'s house that morning and part of the drive, but after that all I remember is the hospital.

On a somewhat humorous note, I wouldn't be surprised if the people at the house I stumbled to would say that was a pretty terrifying moment for them haha. I visited them after I was out of the hospital. After talking to them, it sounded like the wife was about as scared as I was when she opened the door that morning to see a cut up, bloody, incoherent kid Especially since I woke them up banging on their door.

2/10/2010 9:08:15 AM

Only two times I can really think of

1) The first time I soloed while taking flying lessons. The second I lifted off the ground I was like "This is it... no turning back, you are the only one that can land this plane now."

2) When I went skydiving, right when I stepped up to the rear door of the plane and looked down and saw clouds below me..

2/10/2010 9:21:52 AM

My wife and I were out jogging Sunday and as we came to an intersection, some guy stopped and looked left and then turned right without looking and ran into my wife. It was at a low speed, but it knocked her over and ran over both of her legs and the front right tire was resting on her leg. I was a few yards behind her and I ran at the guy yelling at him to back up because he was still on her, but he fumbled around for what seemed like an eternity before finally backing up. Luckily, she came out of it with only a broken ankle, three screws, and some pretty bad roadrash/tiremarks on her legs. I still got the sweats typing this out.

2/10/2010 9:56:55 AM

Yikes - that sucks. I run pretty regularly and that's a usual scene (turning right without looking right, once making sure it's clear on the left). I'd recommend running behind the car so don't have to worry about how careless that person is.

2/10/2010 10:03:39 AM

Watching my father die in front of my eyes. Well, i guess technically he was already dead when I got there, but they performed CPR on him in front of my mom and me for about 30 minutes.

2/10/2010 11:08:33 AM

2) When I went skydiving, right when I stepped up to the rear door of the plane and looked down and saw clouds below me.. (I'm afraid of heights, and I've done tons of shit to test that fear...each one terrifying)

Also...

Ex-girlfriend in college who I continued hooking up with during our freshmen year was like 2 weeks late on her period. Was definitely preparing for fatherhood at the time.

Hmmm...I've closed several bars by myself at least 50 times...lots of moments at 3 and 4 am where I hear things and expect to turn around and see a gun or knife in my face (one bar was right across the street from where another restaurant manager was shot in the face from a late night robbery 2 years earlier).

In a cab in Skopje, Macedonia with two sketchy ass cab drivers who ended up robbing me and a friend. Then got left on the Greece/Macedonian border without a town within 15 miles.

Skidding on ice going over a bridge and had half my car hanging over an icy river.

Was being taken out by the undertow when I was 7 years old...completely helpless when an older man swam out and grabbed me.

The seconds before my Bar Exam results were posted online...

2/10/2010 11:12:15 AM

Realizing that the brakes on snowmobiles are only there for show while I was plowing down a steep hill towards the woods at 70mph

2/10/2010 1:20:16 PM

Playing ultimate frisbee kicking UNC butt at there IM field. I went to pull the bee across the field with all of my power (I can throw 430' in disc golf...) When my fiance at the time caught the corner of my eye. Before I could stop, I had already given her a forearm to the face. Luckily it just broke her nose, cause the force of that one would have caused dentures.

Leaving my parents house in cary, I turned right at a green light. Guy across from me turned left and went into the far lane, the lane i was going in. I honked because I didn't think he was there. The guy and his friend, looked like they were high on something and continued to follow me for miles. The leaped frog me twice, before speeding way past me. Think it was over, I see them waiting for me off on a side road. I stop the car, to avoid some stupid collision, as they line up there car with mine, head on. They accelerate at full speed at me and my wife (fiance at the time) and at the last second swerve. Thought I was going to die for sure.

I'm sure I have more, but those 2 stick out right now

2/10/2010 2:12:38 PM

When I was sixteen, my dad and i came back from a trip to europe and were driving home from Washington DC back to NC, and I was driving and fell asleep with the cruise control set on 80, we both woke up when the car went off the road and me being a dumbass 16 year old driver jerked the wheel to get back on the road causing the car to do multiple 360s across I-95. Thank god it was like 2 in the morning and there was almost nobody on the road.

2/10/2010 2:27:28 PM

Most of mine involve climbing:
1) Avalanche and unplanned bivy in Yosemite high country. During early season when snow still covered the high country we climbed Eichorn/Cathedral Peak. We got lost in the dark on the way back by taking a wrong turn on the trail. Hiking in the wrong direction a slab cut loose right next to us...scary as fuck...hit by the avy's wind and snow. Didn't get back to our car and spent the night on the ground. Had hypothermia but got through the night...

2) My shoulder dislocated rock climbing in Yosemite. We were simul-climbing and I fell 30 ft head first into a pool on a ledge. During the fall I thought for sure I was going to get fucked up. Thankfully I did not.

3) Phd qualifying exam.

4) Trail running in the Jemez mountains in New Mexico I got lost with no water in the middle of summer. 5 hours later I found my car but I got pretty freaked out from the experience...

5) Cerro Negro climb in the Andes--a 4000 ft ice climb all above 14k. Ropeless, exhausted, 70 degree ice with 3000 ft of air beneath me, ice falling from the seracs above us....first time I really felt there was a non-trivial chance I could die.

[Edited on February 10, 2010 at 10:24 PM. Reason : x]

2/10/2010 10:21:33 PM

Have any of you guys ever been caving before? I've only been once, and although I wasn't really scared for my life (there were multiple experienced cavers in my group) just the thought of knowing that I was miles underground and that if our lights stopped working for whatever reason we would be in complete pitch black dark with no possibility of finding a way out.

2/11/2010 9:38:34 AM

^

......

Quote :

"- I was in Boy Scouts in middle/high school and we went caving. I'm not claustrophobic, but it's pretty scary being in a cave crawling through very small openings aptly titled "dead man's tunnel" or something along those lines."

2/11/2010 9:39:53 AM

That's right, I knew I read that somewhere on this message board a few days ago but I should have remembered it was this thread

2/11/2010 12:19:33 PM

I was snorkeling in a coral reef in Aruba when the tide went out. When I had started snorkeling I had swam over the reef. Once the tide was out, the coral went all the way to the surface.
I freaked out, and then had to calm myself back down. I found a coral tunnel under the water and swam back out from where I was stuck. To this day I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't found the way out.

2/11/2010 6:24:23 PM

- rolling my car 2 or 3 times on the way home, not knowing if I had killed myself or my now wife.

- walking into the hospital and seeing my dad the first time after his second brain surgery. Its amazing what a $500,000 visit to the hospital can look like but it got the job done.

- driving up a narrow windy gravel road on the cali coast, knowing I could easily put the car into the pacific with the smallest mistake.

I'm sure I have had more, but those are what stick out.

2/11/2010 7:32:17 PM

that time i got in one little fight...but really, it was more my mom getting scared than me...long story short, i moved to california

2/11/2010 8:51:10 PM

^ lol

2/11/2010 9:55:07 PM

I was only really terrified once:
-when i was 16 i hit a patch of black ice and ended up flipping a car front over. Seeing the ground approaching through the windshield scared the shit out of me and for a split second completely decided that I was about to die.

should have been scared a couple of times:
-was swept out by the ocean current when i was around 12 or 13. i kept trying to swim towards shore but never made any progress. I never panicked, just relaxed and eventually drifted to a sand bar about a quarter mile down where I was able to walk out.

-various high speed vehicle dynamics testing maneuvers in various large and small vehicles, both as a driver and passenger with no professional training.

i may think of more later

[Edited on February 11, 2010 at 10:32 PM. Reason : .]

2/11/2010 10:32:05 PM

There's a recent one I forgot. This past summer I was swimming out past the breaker at night off of Carolina Beach. I have a thing for night swimming in the ocean, or at least I used to. I never saw it, I could only feel the searing pain, but I got either a really bad jellyfish sting or a mild man-o-war sting all up and down my leg. I made it back to shore in less than 30 seconds and sprinted up to my friend screaming at him to pee on my leg.

2/12/2010 12:39:59 AM

When I was little, I think 4 or 5, my friend and I made our way into the edge of the woods near his house. His mom and grandma were in the yard and saw us going into the woods and called us to come back. Well we started running back and I turned around this one tree and ran straight into the web of a bigass writing spider. It was nothing to be scared of but at that age a huge colorful spider is pretty scary. So anyway this thing was then ON ME and I freaked out and knocked it off myself but it just sat there on the ground for a second and climbed a tree right next to me. I was terrified it was coming to get me and I couldn't move at all. My friend ran and got his grandma who came charging in there pissed at me that I'm interrupted whatever she was doing for this shit and grabbed my arm and pulled me out. I don't think my feet touched ground between there and her yard.

Thus began a fear of spiders of any color and decent size that lasted for a long time.

[Edited on February 12, 2010 at 9:21 AM. Reason : *]

2/12/2010 9:20:52 AM

Got rear ended by a f150 on my motorcycle

I remember seeing him coming up in the mirror, I swear i heard his ABS brakes pulse, and though ohh fuck and tried to roll on the throttle.

Landed in the middle of capital blvd at around 5:30, got up thinking i was about to get hit by a car, or my bike, stood there looking stupid for about a minute, then everyone started yelling Get down Get down.

I layed down/collapsed (adrenaline rush was crazy), honestly expecting to have bones sticking out of my legs.

2/12/2010 4:38:46 PM

there are 3 situations when I seriously thought I wouldn't make it out of:

1. getting robbed at gun point and locked in a freezer

2. getting lost, alone, at night, in a bad part of mexico while wearing a bathing suit and a towel

3. losing control of my car while going 75mph and spinning across I-85... then blacking out after violently hitting my head, twice, on the contraption that holds the seatbelt to the car

2/12/2010 10:25:27 PM

Wednesday when I was crossing over I-95 and I hit black ice and went into oncoming traffic. Shockingly I was able to stop the truck without hitting anything, albeit I ended up perpendicular to traffic. But still, craziest shit of 2010.

2/12/2010 10:40:46 PM

finding out I was pregnant. turned out pretty good though

2/13/2010 4:49:42 PM

- doing a 180 on a backwoods country road in my '83 Suburban after a rain. I was 18, an idiot, and went around a curve too fast. Somehow never even went off the road, just ended up changing to the oncoming lane, but facing in the right direction. Just drove back to the first crossroad, turned around there, and continued on to the field party i was going to on that prom night.

- Being pulled over after i knew i shouldn't be driving and knew i was going to get a DWI. I already had some driving shit on my record and pretty much decided that my life was fucking over if this happened to me. Luckily the cop never even asked the question of whether i had been drinking.

2/14/2010 11:02:44 AM

Quote :

"1) The first time I soloed while taking flying lessons. The second I lifted off the ground I was like "This is it... no turning back, you are the only one that can land this plane now.""

I just want to tell you good luck. We're all counting on you.

2/14/2010 12:11:56 PM

When I was in third or fourth grade I fell through a frozen lake. I was terrified, but the thought of death never crossed my mind. I was able to get to close to the shore, but couldn't get out. My friends that were with me were able to drag me out, and drag me home. My parents were probably more scared than I was.

2/14/2010 12:56:51 PM

1)
BASE Jumping at a cliff that has claimed probably more lives than any individual cliff I know of.

Being 2000 ft on top of a cliff in the Alps and having my friend tell me it's not THAT bad. It was slightly cloudy on exit so I couldn't really make out the cliff profile. I came out of the clouds at about 2 seconds where the 7 second Talus looks really scary. I just had to not panic and say you'll make it, you'll make it and at 4 seconds I really started moving and cleared it with lots of room to spare.

2)
Having someone hit me when I had a fully open parachute while they were still in freefall.

3)
Having an off heading off a tower and being spun up under parachute while having about 5 seconds to turn away.

4) While I was in California: one month seeing a guy die skydiving, a girl die skydiving. I come back to North Carolina the next month when my new equipment gets in. I was going to show it to someone across the airport and someone hook themselves in (turn into the ground) right in front of me. He has a death rattle and all (but he lives). Decide to make a BASE jump that night, friend that goes second gets hung up on the tower and ends up on CNN headline news every 30 minutes the next day. I decide to take a break for about a year and haven't ever been as active as I was then.

5)
Buying condoms for the first time

2/17/2010 8:28:03 AM

Had a friend in high school who drove like a madman. I had lots of friends that drove like that, but I didn't trust this guy's driving and was always on edge when I rode with him. He tried to get me to ride to Raleigh with him one day and I agreed, but only if he didn't speed excessively. I know how nerdy that sounds, but if you had ridden with this guy you'd understand. Fell asleep in the passenger seat on the way back. Woke up to the car bouncing. We were heading across a muddy median at about 90 MPH into oncoming traffic on I-64 (this was before they put those steel cables down the median in the narrow spots). The oncoming traffic starts slamming on breaks, but it's obvious nobody is going to stop in time. We come within 5' of the asphalt and the car's wheels finally get some grip. We never actually go into the lane of the oncoming cars, but it was very close. The car cuts right, then left, then right; and finally gets stuck in the mud. I was

2/17/2010 8:54:13 AM

Lost (somewhat, i knew the trucks were about 500m away) on an iraqi street at night by myself, damn plt sgt that i was with forgot it took a couple of seconds longer for me to get down the stairs than everyone else b/c of the gaint aid bag i carried. The shitty part was i couldn't just yell out "where are you" b/c we were under noise/light discpline. found him after about 20 seconds, but 20 seconds of, oh fuck, i'm an american in an iraqi street at night by myself with no radio is scary

2/17/2010 9:54:51 PM

^^^
Damn, I want to try BASE jumping, especially with a wingsuit. I think it's unbelievable what Dean Potter is doing combining climbing/slacklining/base:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7NcLCC-YNI
Balls bigger than boulders..

2/18/2010 1:48:56 AM

^^ That moment combines a couple of my worst fears.

2/18/2010 9:42:23 AM

^^

Craziest Wingsuit BASE footage to date:

http://www.allezbase.com/videos/Ready_To_Go.wmv

My goal is to do the flight from the top of the Eiger all the way down this year, but I'll see.

If you actually want to try BASE:

http://www.basejumper.com/Articles/Getting_Into_BASE/Getting_into_BASE_8.html

2/19/2010 3:45:56 PM

1) Driving my little old Mazda B2000 down a dirt road when I was 17 doing about 60 mph. I didn't know they had just put new gravel on the road and I hit an unpacked part in a curve and did a 180. Half way through I was pointed straight towards a huge embankment that would have killed me if I had gone off of it.

2) Having some skinhead guy accuse my friend of running over his leg in the parking lot of Lincoln Theater (I think Everclear was there with me). He climbed up on the side of my friend's truck and spit in his face and tried to pull him out of the cab. I looked back and he had a whole gang of guys with him, looking like they were waiting for someone to get in a fight with. I was pretty certain we were going to get messed up if we got out but luckily my friend stayed in the car and got out of there. On the way out the guy picked up a huge rock and threw it at the truck, taking a chunk out of the back glass.

3) When my daughter was 2 she fell off a tall chair face first onto a hard tile floor. When I picked her up she had blood all over her mouth. Until we figured out she had just cut her lip I was freaking out thinking the worst.

4) Brain surgery last year was kind of scary, but I didn't think I'd die.

2/19/2010 4:38:50 PM

^ was that the Everclear concert in October? Im pretty sure I saw that happen

ah, nevermind. i misread your post, but I did see a fight at Lincoln theater when Everclear was there

[Edited on March 2, 2010 at 8:06 PM. Reason : misread the post]

3/2/2010 8:04:49 PM

Only one comes to mind right now..

Getting hit by a car in New York city. I remember the impact and bracing myself seeing the ground coming at me. I'm lucky I braced myself or I could have hit my head pretty hard, instead I just broke my shoulder in 2 places and fractured in one.

3/22/2010 9:53:28 PM

Quote :

"I'm pregnant."

3/23/2010 1:36:55 AM

Watching the ambulance carrying my not breathing 6 month old away. I never felt so terrified or useless or small in my entire life.

A deer did crash into the windshield on my side when I was the passenger of my wife's car. Luckily it was a glancing blow so I got showered with glass and blood instead of ending up dead. Though honestly I was less freaked than my wife.

3/23/2010 10:14:35 AM

I've been involved in two pretty decent wrecks (one was just a couple of weeks ago, the other guy rolled over). The smell of airbag deployment still makes me nauseous.
.

3/23/2010 1:26:43 PM

*nauseated.

sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine.

nauseous means you make other people sick.

3/23/2010 1:47:28 PM

[Edited on March 23, 2010 at 2:07 PM. Reason : =]

3/23/2010 1:53:30 PM