Considering that we're coming up on Halloween, wanted to hear about other experiences
had by you that you'll never forget? My top three were:

1. Trying to get handcuffs on a beligerent drunk 6'5", 260 lb. sailor just after watching him knock my partner unconscious while working a Navy club in Long Beach, CA while assigned to Shore Patrol.

2. Having a loaded Remington 870 pump racked and pointed at my head during a Security alert on my first ship.

3. Working with my shipmates to hoist and toss overboard a 1,960 lb.high explosive projectile from inside the center gun room after it had fallen up against an armored hatch, crushing it's electronic fuse cap AGAINST THE FUSE! OOO (freakin') RAH!

Come on let's hear 'em!!

I have never had a really really scary moment.  

The first scary moment I remember was when I was 7 and I finished watching Dracula.  I was afraid to go to sleep so I made a pack with God that if I were to say a decade of the rosary every night before I went to sleep that he would keep Dracula from biting my neck.  I still say a decade of the rosary nightly, still have a neck phobia [no one can touch my neck] and so far no Dracula bites!

The next scary moment was while walking from a restaurant in down Portland with my husband [now ex husband] two very big, very black men popped out from no where [sorry if this is to sound racist, I am not but you'll get the just of the story shortly].  My husband is 6'6" 280lbs of pure cowardness.  He grabs me and literally throws me in front of them [he just fell short of saying Take my wife but leave me and screaming like a Japanese school girl ]

I was petrified for a moment until I noticed the men were actually very nice business men that just happened to be our state treasurer Jim Hill and a friend/associate.  

My next scary moment wasn't one that was life threatening but my husband almost chocked to death and I had to give him the Heimlich and CPR until the paramedics came after him.  Very scary.

Next Scary situation was when I was pregnant and up in the mountains Christmas tree hunting.  I had Will and Whitney with me and I slide into a ravine.  The kids and I were laughing at my predicament as I could not get unlodged.  We were having a great time until about 75 yards from us a cougar howled.  If you've ever heard a cougar howl from that distance you'll know what fear is.  I grabbed Will and Whitney and placed them behind me and struggled and struggled to get out of the frozen ravine.  I finally got myself seated up on top of the snow so the kids were positioned behind me.  I had my .44 with me and we waited there until David came with the Jimmy.  Very Scary to say the least.

Lastly when my two boys nearly died of E Coli poisoning.  There is no words to describe how scary it is to sit in a hospital room and have the priest come and give your son his last rights.  Luckily both my boys recovered.

Patty

1 I was removing an outlet on the ground floor of a 3 story sky bridge, the glass guys were removing a 10 x10 1" thick pane on the third. They said it was good to go and stopped work for me. The next thing I know there is a glass bomb going off about 10' to my right.  

2 Fuse was blown on a pole light, my JW at the time is putting a new one in. I am getting ready to tell him maby we should check to see if the wire is still shorted out when boom the line was still grounded and the fuse explodes in his hand like a shotgun shell.

3 Guy next to me cuts off 3 fingers in a old foot trip punch press.

4 Just a few days ago a 20'x20' panel for a concrete wall pour free falls 10' and crashes to the rebar column. Evident ly the crane operator accidentally hit the cable brake release lever. We were 30' away.

Meeting Gunkata.

1. Breaking my neck when I was 14 and lying on the gurney looking at the doctor talk to my parents. "Do you have a neuro-surgeon you prefer?" Scared the hell out of me!

2. Catching a .22 ricochet right between my eyes. Hurt like hell and bled like a son of a bitch...could not stop thinking about how easily that could have been an eye. (I was 18 at the time)

3. Driving my mom's Jaguar at about 90 mph and realizing that the direction I was turning the car was not the direction it was going. About the time I leaned on the brakes and counter steered was when I realized a concrete wall on the bridge was directly in my path. I hit it just shy of dead on at about 65 mph. That was bad, what was worse is that I rode up on the wall and teetered almost going over it to the other freeway about 30 feet below. I slid back down and came to a rest on the bridge. And the next thing I knew I was standing besides the car talking to a firefighter. I have no recollection of how I got out of the car and the firefighter could not figure out how I managed to get out either. That was scary.

Many years ago, part of my work involved maintaining some large (2.5KW -- thats RMS, not PMP) audio amplifiers. These used a pair of large triodes (about 18" tall, 8" diameter).

These had ~ 2kv on the anodes.

The triodes had 4 pins, held in the base by screws.

The "proper" way to work on these was to turn them off, go to the power distribution panel, turn off the supply, remove the fuses and put them in your pocket (stopped anyone just turning the power back on).

Well, as you can imagine, familiarity breeds contempt, and we almost never bothered with the power distribution/fuses just to change a tube...

So, I pressed the off button, heaved the amp out of its cabinet (about 6' tall and 3' wide), pulled it out enough to reach, then unscrewed the screws, removed the old tube, put the new one back, screwed it up tight, and pushed the amp back into its cabinet.

Then I noticed that the volt meter for the anode voltage was stuck, full scale at 3kv.

Just occasionally they would do this, because with no load the power supply would reach over 3kv, so iff the timing was off, and the power was applied before the tube heaters had warmed up, there would be no load to pull the voltage down.

So I tapped the meter to free the needle. Nothing happened. Tried again. Nothing.
So I gave it a pretty hefty thump. the needle flicckered downwards for a fraction of a second, then back up again.

The relay (contactor) pwoering the HV circuits had stuck. Switching off had dropped all the other power relays, but not this one.

I had been screwing around with a (small) screw-driver on a screw in the anode connection with 3kv+ on it (the supply was fused at 3A - on the HV side).

My fingers must have been with 1/4" of it.

The realization was horrible.

I always removed the distribution fuses after that ....

Meeting Gunkata.

getting caught in wind shear

Quoted: getting caught in wind shear

You a pilot munk?

Pre-kids, back when I had a real life

"Flying is easy, it's the landings.... "

When I was around 18 or so I was shooting my bolt action 30-06 and experienced a split shell casing for the first time.  The case failed with a pretty big split and a bunch of gas and powder bits went in my face.  For about 3 seconds I thought I had blown my face off. Good thing I had glasses on.

Things on the "DO NOT RE-LIVE" list:

1. One icy December afternoon in Iowa.  Skidded over the edge of an Interstate embankment, and down 15-20 feet.  Car stayed upright the whole way, and remarkably, was undamaged after that.  Drove back on to the Interstate, and made it back home.



2. Working with a bench grinder.  The wheel broke, and threw a chunk.  Fortunately, I wasn't standing directly in line with the wheel.  Eerie feeling watching that chunk whiz by though.



3. Sea Stories.  The difference between sea stories and fairy tales is the latter start with "once upon a time".  Sea stories start with "This is a no shitter..."
   
   
   • Taxi ride in Jebel Ali, UAE.  Taxi drivers worldwide are nuts - this one was driving bumper-to-bumper at 90 MPH.  My shipmates had volunteered to sit in back, leaving me in the shotgun seat.  
   
   
   • Leaving Hong Kong Harbor.  Rudder's 5 degrees over, and we're doing 18 knots - in the fog.  Then we lose electrical power.  No radar or GPS (can't tell where you are), rudder's stuck at 5 degrees over (no way to straighten it out in under 5 minutes), and we're still doing 18 knots (we can't slow down anytime soon).  Not really scared - more of an "okay, now what?" feeling, since there wasn't a blessed thing we could do to avoid running into anything.
   
   
   • Taking back-to-back 42 degree rolls - in a 20,000 ton helicopter carrier.  At maximum roll, we hung there for a moment - the ship's way of saying "do I stay or do I go?" (Only partially kidding on this one - we really were that close to going over.) Hours later, found out that a 30 ton object mounted on a wheeled carriage had broken loose during said rolls, and had started careening about in the hangar bay.
   
   
   • Having the hangar bay sprinkler system go off, and shorting out a main transformer.  Right next to a pile of C4.  The hangar bay was full of ordinance at the time.  We were offloading 700 tons of it prior to going into the shipyards.
   
   
   • Losing all electrical power while pierside in Aqaba, Jordan.  Having to call away the security detachment (and deploy with it) while a diplomatic reception is in progress on the flight deck.  Oh yeah, Sadaam Hussein's sons-in-law had defected to Jordan about a week before the soiree...
   
   
   • Midnight to 4AM watch.  In port, Aqaba, Jordan (see above).  About 2AM, roving watch reports there's an unidentified duffle bag at the foot of the gangway.  Call away for EOD, and firefighting and security teams - without waking up the rest of the ship.  Turns out the package is indeed someone's duffle bag - but it takes half an hour to figure this out.

Nothing really horribly scary ever happened to me.

Of course there was the time I going through basic at Fort Benning and the "cattlecar" driver decided to race an oncoming train to cross the tracks in front of him. It was a close call. Our LT/XO was in a vehicle behind us and was pissing mad when he finally caught up at the barracks at Harmony Church. The driver had dropped us off and was gone in a flash by then so he took after him. Warning - Do not piss off Army Rangers.

Then there was Army Airborne School. Who would have guessed these tough warriors would all be praying praying praying the whole ride in the plane. Kinda of unnerved me. It was bad enough going on my first jump, flying low to the ground, and trying to remember to look out for all the chutes on the way down, what to do if you land on one below you, what to do if someone lands on your chute above, will the main chute open, can I reach me reserve in time and will it open? And then everybody is praying praying praying. I can read their lips, I know those prayers, I say a few myself. The sweat is forming on my forehead. Everywhere the look of fear. We line up. I am last. I watch the others in front of me being sucked out of the plane. You usually don't jump from a jet for your first jump but nothing else was available. The plane and the pilots were borrowed from the National Guard. I wonder why they are flying so low. Is that normal to jump so close to the ground?  As I near the door I feel the onrush of hurricane speed wind and just as I feel the suction I am pulled outside in an instant. I tumble around like a rag doll for a couple of seconds, then feel like I hit the end of a hangman’s noose as the chute opens and I go from over 100mph to zero in an instant. I feel all stretched out and two inches taller. Dang, being last means everyone else is landing in that nice plowed section of the landing field while I am flying off to far end, gee I hope I don't hit the trees, ohh it looks like I won't, I'm coming down much too fast for that. Am I supposed to fall that fast? Is there a hole in my chute? Look up, look down. The ground is coming up fast fast fast, and I'm about to hit it.  At least there is some nice grass there and then it's time for a PLF. As my feet slam the ground I can feel every bone in my body in slow motion. It feels like I hit concrete and hard. I can feel every bone and muscle in my body as I roll off to my side in the PLF that was supposed to cushion the impact but didn't seem to do any good. Only four more to go...

Some one held a gun to my head last weekend....that kinda sucked

Oh ya. I almost drowned once.

A couple years ago I was camping with my church. We decided to go rafting with the kids on the river.  The part of the river we were going down was pretty calm.  Mostly class zero/I. The only real rapid was like a class II over a small section of rocks. Everyone had life jackets, including me.  I can swim OK and I've taken about 3 previous rafting trips over a lot rougher water.

It was at the class II that I came off the raft and got stuck in the current behind the rock.  I was wearing contact lenses (bad idea) and with the water in my eyes, my eyelids were pretty much glued shut and when I could open them I couldn't see anything anyway.  There was a lot of vertical tumbling. I didn't know which way was up.  I couldn't find the surface to get any air.  Occasionally I could feel a rock with my feet and push with my legs, feel my head come out of the water and take a hurried breath before being tumbled again.  Even a little amount of moving water is an unbelievably powerful force.

Time perception always changes in situations like this.  I can't say how long this went on.  Over the whole ordeal I was only able to take about 3 small breaths.  I was pretty much blind, disoriented, and fighting with everything I could muster while quickly running out of air.  At one point I thought, rather mater-of-factly, "well, this is it.  If I don't get air in a hurry I'm going to die."  As much as I was fighting for my life on the outside, I was surprised how emotionally peaceful I was on the inside.  For those that have placed their faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2Cor. 5), which is far better (Phil 1:23).

I was fortunate to not inhale much if any water.  I must have been pretty close to passing out.  My head was pounding with the pulse of my heart.  Suddenly, without explanation, I just popped out of the rapid as quickly as I had entered it.  I floated down stream and crawled about halfway out of the water on a rocky shore.   My body felt like a sack of lead shot.  I couldn't move an inch.  Every last ounce of strength was spent.  My pastor and another dear brother from church helped me up higher on to the shore.  I rested for 20 minutes or so before throwing up in front of all of the people who had gathered around.  We stayed on the shore for another hour or so before I had any strength to get back in the water and get to the next place where we could get back to the road.

I'm thankful for the prayers of my brothers and sisters in the church as they scrambled to try and get to me.

Quoted: Some one held a gun to my head last weekend....that kinda sucked

Sorry bout that.

Quoted: Quoted: Some one held a gun to my head last weekend....that kinda sucked Sorry bout that.

If you were here right now I'd hit you in the face with a purse.

Yea, I almost drowned once....that sucked too.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Some one held a gun to my head last weekend....that kinda sucked Sorry bout that. If you were here right now I'd hit you in the face with a purse. Yea, I almost drowned once....that sucked too.

<------ Purse, not drowning!!

I was in a convoy of Aviation fuel trucks heading back to the rear with the gear and we took wrong turn and tried to drive to Basrah(SP?).  This was about 2-3 weeks after we routed the Iraqies from Kuwait.  We came upon a road block and there were some less-than-pleased Iraqies that came running out, yelling and screaming (it did not sound none to friendly) while chambering their AK's.  At this road block I noticed what must have been the only two functional T-72's left in their army behind a birm with the TC's watching us.  No one but me had any ammo at the time because we were supposed to turn it all back in the week before.  I had a mag or two and that was all the ammo among the 12-13 of us.  Once our fearless leader figured out we were on the path to certain destruction he managed to do the quickest U-turn I'de ever seen a HMMT (I cant remember the acronyme for this type of truck.  It was the big 8 wheeled truck) do.  I really had no idea that those things would turn that tight.  No shots fired and we found our way home.  Scared me to damn death though.

For some reason the Shots being fired at us while in the Blackhawk were not nearly as scary.  I dont know why.  Although looking back it should have scared the hell out of me.

I've done other stupid things too...


Mark.

Went on a 3day long white water rafting trip with my dad, brother and a bunch of my dad's friends on the lower salmon river then out through Hell's Canyon.  Got pitched on one of the last rapids of the first day right on one of those rocks thats big and the water kinda backwashes on the other side.  Kept getting sucked under and everytime it would surface to take a breath i wound up inhaling water.  Finally got spit out of that mess, then got caught in a weird current and was heading strait for a 30foot tall rock, as i braced for impact with the legs out in front, Then i got sucked under again.  But instead of hitting the rock i got sucked through it, no joke.  There was a hole in it just big enough for a person to fit.  By that time i was pretty well in shock and pretty much resigned myself to death.  That was probably the scariest part of the whole thing looking back.  then i popped out the other side and floated on down river.  All told, we wound up breaking both oars in use on the raft (oar frame raft), the spare oar attached to the frame, broke the frame in 6 spots, lost a bunch of food and pop out of the cool (pop sinks, light beer floats).  The rest of the trip was pretty sweet, but my dad was really shaken up as he was at the helm when it happend.  

another rafting related scary thing happend this last summer.  I dont know if you all remeber, but there was a bad rafting accident that happend down on the deschutes where a girl died and another busted up her knee.  Well, my wife, her dad and uncle were on that trip.  I didnt go as i no longer like to go rafting (see above).  Well i was talking my wife's mom to work cause i had some business to attend to out by her work.  Then i get a call from my wife's phone and didnt hear it ring, then she calls again and i dont hear it till the last ring, and of course she does not leave a msg (she got severely scolded for this later).  So I frantically try to call her 3x, and cant get through.  About 5 mins later she finally gets through.  I already had a bad feeling about the trip before she even left, and this just about drove me nuts.  Thats when she tells me that one girl was missing, and that she's in the Dalles with the other girl at the hospital.  That was F'ing scary.  Scary part was, my wife go pitched in the same set of rapids that the girl died in, and got hung up on the raft.  

Thats about it for me.

ETA:  Last winter was heading to ID to visit family.  Made it through most of the gorge OK, then hit the flats outside of Umatilla (by that biiiig tree farm) and everyone starts slowing down.  And be being the dick that i am, go WTF and go to change lanes.  About that time something clicks and i slowly begin to realize that im on a skating rink.  compunding this is the fact that im in a 2wd Tacoma with crappy factory tires.  I tell you what, for about 10minutes, you couldnt get a needle up my ass with a jack hammer.  That was scary shit.  Then once you get used to it its kinda fun, although my wife might disagree with that.  Man i miss her Legacy GT, that was a sweet car.

Once we were working in a elevator shaft on top of the car. It was on the first floor and my partner and I get out to get parts. The doors close with the door key on the inside.
So now what? I put a full body harness on get on the roof, attach it to a hand crank hoist the roofers were using to bring their material up the side of the building.
My partner hand cranks me down about then 20' then I drop 30' in about 1 second. He almost breaks his wrist, but he stopped me about 10' from hitting bottom.
Definitely an ass pucker moment.

You got 9 lives pribbz.  Get a desk job.

1. Passing a car in rural Idaho at 110, then out of a depression someone turned into the lane I was in.

2. GF's ex pointing a sg at me, but since I was drunk and disarmed him, maybe that does not count? (one of 4 guns pointed at me by people meaning harm)

3. The wall of cold water at test Depth on a 640 class Submarine, when we blew out the shaft seals sucked. (one of 2 test depth floodings)

4. Waking up in CCU following a "routine" surgery was not good.

There are more but this is a good start.

Watch an artillery shell go off on a house and a row of houses in a small town in Croatia during the war in 1991 or so. Scary.....

Was just watching it off the hillside and then leaving the country back to Hungary, the Yugoslav asked me if I was muslim or Christian.

Said I was christian which I am

Yikes!!! A lot of you have had some very scary moments. I almost drowned when I was in the 3rd grade. I sure did have one heck of a rope burn on my neck to show for it.

I've had a few.
Touching 7.2KV was not good.
I have had a few transformers melt down just over my head.
Almost drowned.
Been shot at, way to many times. The worst was when a friend of mine got hit.

keep in mind this all happened in pitch dark of night . once several years back i was on my way up for a family hunt in eastern oregon in the grizzly unit i got bad directions and took a wrong turn i was driving a old 78 datson pu with oversize tires i owned it for about a week i was getting fustrated since we were going no where and i was speeding up a hill hit about 50mph and hit some loose gravel and lost contol and went off a cliff the truck wend side ways and rolled 3 and a half times with it hit up against a rock and some trees . i had gripped the steering wheel and pushed myself into my seat my buddy was just bouncing all over the cab the it hit the bottom a my side of the cab was crushed this was pre seat belt law so we were not wearing any thank God or i'd be dead today since when it hit bottom i rolled into a ball other wise if i had a sholder strap on it would have crushed my head or broke my neck. so hear we are upside down some fluid is leaking on us out of fear of a gas leak we wanted out quickly turned out to be gear oil which got all over me. i could'nt open my dore but the back window had popped out and i climbed out it and under the what was left of the bed of the truck and rushed up the hill reached the top and i was cusing and yelling my freind clamed me down

it was pitch black of night we could not see a thing we start walking back the way we came and finally came across a ranch house and the rancher drove us to town. my dad came looking for us and found us in town sitting at a bus stop on the main street

the next day we went back and saw the damage my freind who managed to stay clam went into shock when he saw how far down we went and how destroyed the truck was and was able to walk away with only a few aches cuts and bruses and i lost some hair on my head where it my head had rubbed the hood when the cab crashed in.

then the next day while hunting  i got lost in the woods at night first time i ever got lost and it probably would not have scared me but after rolling the truck i had had enough

Quoted: getting caught in wind shear

  Yup me too. When I was a student pilot. First XC solo. And it happened right over the Troutdale airport.