We've all heard about people "seeing the light" and their lives "flashing before their eyes," but it's so easy for us to minimize this to something we read in a book or see in a movie.
But according to these Redditors, those experiences not only are real, but they're often shocking and completely took them by surprise.
Curious, Redditor Vinhfluenza asked:
"What is the closest to death you have ever gotten?"
A Silent Killer
"Carbon Monoxide poisoning on a job site. The helpless feeling of crawling out of that basement while my body got weaker and weaker is something I still think about often. Crazy dreams and the cheapest high I’ve ever had, lol (laughing out loud)."
- eh_funk
CPR For The Win
"I was dead technically for 19 minutes. I drowned in a pool when I was two. Parents gave CPR until medics arrived."
- NoName_Left
"My mom died for 30 minutes while in the hospital; they literally did CPR for 30 minutes, and after 10, a doctor wanted to give up and call it, but another doctor refused and kept working on her because to him, my mom was too young to die (she's 41)."
"Fortunately, they were able to bring her back and put her on a ventilator. She was in the ICU for four days and on the ventilator for two days before she was able to be in a normal hospital room for the rest of her stay (just a week). While she was there, they looked for brain damage and none was found!"
- Puncake_DoubleG06
The Widow-Maker
"I had a widow-maker heart attack at age 55. I don’t recall any of this, but I was told I complained of shoulder pain during the weekly flag football game. One astute player quickly drove me to the hospital. I walked in and collapsed."
"I received 15 shocks over five hours. I was put in an induced coma and attached to the Ecmo (which pumps and oxygenates your blood). I woke up a week later and was in the hospital for a month. Eight years ago. Living my best life."
- grateful_dad13
RIP, Mudflap
"When I was in Afghanistan, we were on our Forward Operating Base and had just concluded a mission brief."
"I went to go to the latrine and realized I left my hat on the table, so I turned around quickly to get it."
"About five seconds later, a rocket hit right outside the latrine door, exactly where I should have been. It ended up killing our dog, but it should have been me. Had I not been around the corner of a hesco barrier to get my hat, I'd be gone."
- itspeterj
"That is very frightening. And I am so sorry to hear about the dog."
- cartercharles
"If I ever want to jump-start a country music career, 'The Taliban Killed My Dog' is gonna be a banger."
"His name was Mudflap, and he was a very good dog. I was in the process of looking up the paperwork to bring him home. He used to go on patrols with us and keep other dogs and people away from us. Just this giant white angel of a dog."
- itspeterj
"RIP Mudflap. The goodest of doggos."
- ComfortableOwl0
The Switch Of A Seat
"Not me, but a friend of my dad’s once went to a football (soccer) match. While he was queueing, a couple of guys approached him and one asked if he could switch tickets with him so the two could sit together."
"My dad’s friend agreed, and swapped tickets, ending up sitting on the opposite side of the stadium."
"That football match took place at Hillsborough Stadium, 15 April 1989."
"His original ticket was right in the middle of where the disaster happened. He never found out if the guys he traded tickets with survived or not."
- CuckooPint
The Power Of Water
"When I was around six years old, I snuck into the wild water slide of a park we stayed at. At some point, one section ended in a pool about one meter deep, but I got stuck under the current of the slide dumping its water on me."
"Apparently, I got out when an adult accidentally tripped over me when exiting the slide. I was unconscious by then and only remember the immense force of the water pinning me down at the bottom of the pool."
"Never thought water from a slide could kill me. Never disrespected the power of water again."
- HappyCamperT
"I was a lifeguard at a Waterpark in college. The exact scenario you described happened all the time. The slides were far and away the most likely place people would get hurt (but that didn't stop our dumba**es from all piling in at once at the end of shifts)."
- Lakers2020Champs3
Hair Dye Allergies
"I am allergic to hair dye. I went gray early and figured that if I went for an antihistamine injection before I dyed my hair, the allergic reaction wouldn't be so bad."
"I did this a few times and then my kidneys shut down."
"Google Hair dye allergies. It's one of the worst ones you can get, and not be played around with."
- Rare_Cranberry_9454
From Far Below
"The wave pool at Action Park in New Jersey. I went under and there were people on floats above me so I wasn't able to surface. I managed to push my way through and got air. There is a Netflix show about how dangerous that place was."
- Stinkeye63
"Action Park survivor here, too. I consider it a badge of honor."
- Thereal_maxpowers
"Oh god, I read 'Action Park' and immediately had a physical recoil reaction. Jesus, that place."
- WitchesTee
Too Hot To Handle
"When I was young, I was playing around in my dad’s old car. I accidentally closed the trunk which didn’t have the emergency latch thing most new cars have. It was also the middle of summer in the south. I thought for sure I was done fire. I screamed and panicked for a while and thankfully my dad found me after not too long of being trapped."
"Let’s just say I’ve tried extremely hard to block that from my memory since then. I hate thinking about what could’ve been from just an accident…"
- kgaviation
Hit-And-Run Incident
"As a pedestrian, I was involved in a hit-and-run when crossing the road by a speeding van. Thankfully, I brushed the front side of the van. So I was sort of thrown and sent spinning wildly. I was fine bar a broken arm. But in those fleeting moments when the van rounded the corner and I knew I was going to be hit, my life did literally flash before my eyes."
"Time felt like it was slowed down and I managed to think about how I wasn't going to be able to escape it, that I was about to die too young, that I had many regrets. I thought about all of this in-depth in the space of about 5 seconds. It was crazy. They never caught the driver."
- Gailde_or_Galde
Medical Marvels
"Pretty d**n close! When you suffer a type A aortic dissection you start with about five percent chance of survival and less than 24 hours to live. Your odds improve to about 25 percent if they correctly diagnose you before you die. Your odds are up to about 50 percent if they can get you on an operating table."
"Then it's just the small matter of a 10-hour open heart surgery where they chill your blood down to put you into hypothermia, stop your heart so they can cut out your aortic valve (the exit valve on your heart), ascending aorta, and aortic arch, replace it with silicone, then fire your heart back up and hope for the best."
"I was on cardiopulmonary bypass for about three and a half hours; that's when your blood is being circulated out through a machine where it's chilled and oxygenated before being pumped back in."
- boof_diddley
"Medical science is unbelievable sometimes! Glad you're still here!"
- SomethingAboutUsers
"What they were able to do, and how they did it, was absolutely insane. I often think about all of the micro-human achievements that went into the operation and aftercare. All these tiny, incremental developments by thousands of different people lead to that capability. For all our faults, humans are f**king incredible."
- boof_diddley
Way Too Close
"When I was in middle school I was at a stoplight with my adopted older brother. The light had just turned green so we were crossing the intersection in our little white car when a black truck with a lift kit decided he didn’t want to stop for the red light."
"I was sitting in the passenger seat and this truck was coming at us from the right. All I remember is seeing the front end of that truck flying at me. He must have been doing about 80 MPH in a 25."
"I just thought to myself, 'Yep. This is how I die.' So I closed my eyes and braced myself for that truck to crush me."
"The person who was driving that truck swerved at the last second and ripped our front bumper off of our car. I still feel fear when thinking about that."
- joerizz91
The End Is Near
"Got admitted to hospital for suspected appendicitis (turned out to be severe Crohn's Disease). Apparently, at one point I called my parents and told them that I felt like I was dying, but I don't remember it at all."
"I also told my doctors at one point that I had this horrible impending sense of doom feeling in my chest, like something really bad was going to happen but I didn't know what, and they immediately started to take my case more seriously. Apparently, 'impending sense of doom' is a legitimate symptom and can be a sign that you're about to have a heart attack/you're dying."
"I've now been in remission from Crohn's disease for two years thanks to infusions of biological medication that I get every six weeks."
- Cumulus-Crafts
Boy Scout Adventures
"I was a boy scout playing capture the flag in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming at scout camp. I ran into a clearing in the woods being chased by two buddies. I ended up face to face with a bull moose, 20ish feet away."
"It charged us, the clearing was because they had a lot of fallen trees so we were able to drop inside or between logs and hide easily, and hopping over logs was hard for the moose."
"If there weren't logs we would have definitely been gored by it. In case you don't know bull moose are 1200lbs on average 6ft tall at the shoulder (so the head is higher, and it's a four-legged animal so that's massive) the antlers alone weigh 30lbs and can have a 'wingspan' of three to five feet."
- Sarcastic_Rascal
"Moose are less on goring, more on stomps and kicks. Don't f**k with moose!"
"I saw a vid of a grizzly sneaking up on a moose, in a small town on a river or lake. Moose was down by the water."
"Most of the video is the bear trying to escape, hiding behind buildings while the moose looks for it."
- Squigglepig52
Yo, Ho, All Hands
"I got caught in a storm 30 miles offshore. A storm blew out from onshore and caught us off guard. My friend had turned the radio off because there were no storms forecasted. We were tied off on an oil rig (gulf of Mexico) and catching snapper and sharks, drinking and even swimming, completely oblivious to what was coming at us."
"When we heard the low rumble of thunder drifting out to us from the direction of land, fear set in. We were too far out to see land at all, so it was just us and whatever was coming at us. The first rumble was barely there. We paused for a second, but decided it was a plane or something. The second rumble snapped us to attention. We pulled up our lines, tied everything down, and hit full speed heading toward shore. My friend turned his radio back on, heard the weather advisory, and that’s when he said, 'Oh s**t.'"
"As the storm rolled over us, it was harrowing. The sea took on this odd color blend, kind of purple on one side of us and green on the other. The waves quickly picked up, and we began catching air every time we’d crest a wave. Our boat was not big, at 25 feet, and we were now fighting over 12-feet seas, and wind pushing back at us at 50 miles per hour. The only way to survive was to keep the nose of the boat straight into the wind, or we’d roll."
"I had tied down in the back, near the motors, and was sitting cross-legged, with rope wrapped around both wrists, tied to both sides of the boat. We were smashing into the water when we’d come back down from being airborne, and at one point I recall sitting waist-deep in water, hearing the motors trying to drown out, as we fell rear-first in the water. They picked back up though, and we kept going."
"I had my eyes closed at first, but I decided if I die, I want to see what kills me. Lighting was everywhere, the rain was blasting hard into our faces, and I watched a tornado spin sideways overhead. I’m not even sure which side was the origin and which side was the tail, it was just this huge tube of darkness rotating over us. The boat was flying over each wave, smashing back into the water with so much force that we were all afraid it would break apart."
"My friend yelled to everyone that the boat hull was buoyant, so if it shattered, grab a piece and hold on. The motors were screaming when we’d fly, and then choke down when we’d hit the water with massive force. This happened hundreds of times, and each time I think we all feared it would be the last time we’d hear it."
"We took turns yelling coordinates to my friend as he kept us facing straight into the wind. He had a handheld GPS that we used for monitoring our direction. After about an hour, we finally hit the back side of the storm. I remember my friend cheering, and I was happy, but also sort of numb. We were about 10 miles off course to the east, due to the wind we had to face into, so we had a longer trip back than when we had headed out."
"When we got back to shore, all of our partners were yelling, and when the boat was on the trailer, we all hugged and thanked my friend for keeping us alive. We were late coming back and they had feared the worst. Everyone had given up on the fish we had in the cooler, except for me, so I stayed up until 2:00 or 3:00 AM cleaning the fish at home, then tossed the fillets in the fridge, showered, and went to bed. No way was I wasting those fish, not after we nearly gave out lives to catch them."
"This may or may not be the closest I’ve come to dying, but it’s certainly the most memorable."
- aprilflowers75
From medical marvels to accidents to shocking tales of the sea, these stories were harrowing and surprising, and we're grateful all these Redditors lived to tell the tale.
It's a great reminder to never take life for granted and that what might happen in our final moments could be deeply, truly surprising.
@priscillachan/Instagram