80 Life-or-Death Moments When Gut Feelings Became Unshakeable Lifelines
Needless to say, i lost the pickup truck but kept my mom.
When I was 18 I left for some missions group thing for my gap year, this took place on an island in central America. Earlier that night, everyone had been swimming off the dock, but I didn’t want to because of all the jellyfish. As this a group of guys fresh out of high school, this decision earned me the title of “huge p***y”.
Later that night, I go back down to the docks, just thinking about stuff. Because I want to be alone, obviously I creeped out of the house without telling anyone. I see the water and think “While no one is around to judge me, I should get over my fear, quit being a p***y, and jump in the water.” But for some reason I hesitate, and shine my flashlight on the spot I want to jump to.
There’s this weird, clear, worm looking thing I’ve never seen before. It’s not exactly swimming, it’s like twitching erratically and gently moving with the water. I’m wondering what the hell it is, when I look around more and see a box jelly with a missing tentacle, and the tentacles look exactly like the “worm”.
The box jellies there weren’t like the kinds in Australia where you get hit and you’re dead, but these were apparently bad enough to send you into shock with the pain, and if I had been in water, with no one else around to find me, there’s a very good chance I would’ve drowned if I just jumped in without checking.
EDIT: Feel like I should clarify that when the other guys were swimming, there were NOT box jellies around, just a normal kind that mildly stung you and didn’t do much else.
Was driving at the speed limit of 70mph on a highway that I drove daily to go home from work. This particular day, there was an event downtown that had the traffic completely stopped for miles. There was an S bend in the road though, so you couldn’t tell until you were nearly on top of it.
I tried to brake, but nothing happened. My brain broke and I kept slamming on the brake pedal, but nothing was happening, and I was in the left lane of a four lane highway with very little time to spare before I nearly hit the wall of cars in front of me. Left shoulder of the road was barely wide enough for a bike, and cars were coming up the on-ramp on the right side.
I noticed a small gap in between the cars on the on-ramp, but it was in front of me, so I actually sped up to sneak through that gap and onto the grass beside the highway. At one point, I was over 85mph knowing I had no brakes in order to get through that gap. I barely made it, and eventually slowed to a stop on the grass. I called my friends to come help, and when they showed up 45 minutes later, I was still clutching the steering wheel with white knuckles and staring straight ahead. It’s a miracle that I walked away without a scratch.
In 1976, I was on vacation with my parents in Colorado and we drive through Big Thompson Canyon. My mom, brother and I all wanted to stay at one of the little hotels within the canyon, but my dad said no, and we continued on our way home to Illinois. After we got home, we saw on the news that the canyon flooded, killing over 100 people. Had we stayed there, we would have probably been killed too.
Was standing in line outside of the club Mohawk during SXSW 2014 to see Tyler the Creator. At the last minute decided I’d rather go back to Stubbs and catch Damon Albarn’s set. As I headed back up the street a drunk driver trying to escape the police smashed the barrier, missed me by inches and killed 4 people I was standing next to.
Afghanistan 2009, was a driver always cut corners one day my gut said f**k it lets take er wide, so i did. Next vehicle behind me cut the corner and hit an IED.
Mine wasn’t a gut feeling, rather it was a dream. I grew up in the country on several acres of woods and creeks. I loved any and all animals – I was obsessed. I would bring all manner of critters home and put them in an aquarium to observe before releasing them back where I found them the next day.
One day I found a water snake near the creek, so of course I brought it home and put it in the aquarium. That night I had a dream. I was reading our local newspaper and the headline said a young girl had died after a venomous snake had escaped an enclosure and bitten her. Except it was my name printed in the paper along with that day’s date! I jolted awake in a cold sweat and immediately took the entire aquarium outside and put it by the tree line before flipping the lid open and booking it back inside.
The next day at school during Library I looked up a book about snakes (pre-internet days) and there was a picture of the snake I had brought home – not the harmless water snake I had thought, but a water moccasin, aka cottonmouth. A snake that could have very easily killed a young child.
So yeah, looking back I realize how utterly stupid I had been and how easily it could have gone terribly wrong. Or maybe nothing would have happened and I’m just making a big deal of a scary dream. I don’t know, but I like to think something was watching out for me that night.
