
Some of us have experienced near-death experiences that haunt us to this day.
The moment I thought, "this is how I'm gonna go," was when I got "certified" for scuba-diving in Cozumel, Mexico, and went underwater following a guide.
He took a small group of us through a TUNNEL. On our first-ever scuba-diving excursion. I was not informed about how we can adjust our buoyancy and I was starting to panic about why my body was dragging along the ocean floor.
I remember forcing myself to swim up higher – while inside the dark tunnel – and I bashed my head on the cave's ceiling so hard I blacked out for a second.
Curious to hear about near-death experiences Redditor spider_takerr asked strangers on the internet:
"What was your 'oh f'k, I'm gonna die' moment?"

Scenes From A Hospital
The institution meant to save lives can also be a grim place.
What The Nurse Missed
"My mom gave birth to me at a teaching hospital and one of the new nurses didn't catch that I was positioned incorrectly. Doctor didn't notice until it was too late and my mom had to have an emergency c section that almost killed us. She says the doctor chewed the absolute hell out of that nurse."'
Giving Life
"When my daughter was born, I had a caesarean and lost too much blood. I got cold and really tired and the people around me suddenly got busy and kept saying 'stay awake, stay awake', I heard my daughter cry and they held her up and I thought since she's been born safe and while it was ok for me to let go. I wasn't frightened, just so so tired."
The Last Breath
"I can't breathe through my nose due to a birth defect. I had surgery and it was at a teaching hospital. The doctor messed up and tried to run tubes up my nose, causing everything to swell and cutting off what little breathing I can do through my nose. Then they ran the tube down my throat, when all was done my jaw was wired shut. My throat swelled. I woke up trying to breathe and not being able to get much breath, I panicked and passed out. I remember thinking this is how I die. I woke up to my main doctor unwiring my jaw and cussing out the trainee doctor."
En Route To The Hospital
"When the ambulance attendant yelled to the driver to hit the lights & sirens 'her heart rate's dropping, we're losing her.'"
Nature
Nature can be cruel at times. Or just horrible at pranking.
Scary Wipeout
"Was surfing on a day I shouldn't have gone out and got pummeled by some heavy waves. Became disoriented underwater and couldn't tell which way was up. Getting dragged by my board when I felt like I was starting to black out and felt like I was pretty close to reflexively gasping for air, which would have been bad to do underwater. I don't even remember how I reached the surface and I don't really even remember taking a big dramatic breath like you'd see in a movie...I just remember my vision and hearing coming back while I was laying on my board, and then looking around for the next set of waves to see if I could reach the shore. Fortunately I had been pulled closer in by the prior wave(s) and was able to lay on my board and get back safely."
Wind In My Sails
"Walking home from school carrying an art portfolio case -- basically a 2.5-foot by 4-foot by 1-inch briefcase. In other words, a hand-held sail."
"Strong wind gusts. Crossing a busy highway on an overpass."
"A very strong gust hit me straight from the side, and the portfolio caught it like a damn galleon sail. I felt myself nearly lifted off the sidewalk for a split-second, and I was pushed a couple steps towards the safety rail. I wasn't airborne or anything, but I would have tumbled over it if I were just a bit less lucky."
The Hero
"Had two buddies get stuck in a rip tide on a very remote black sand beach on the north part of big island hawaii. One of their girl friends realized they couldn't get back in because one cramped up too badly and ran to get me for help. It was the perfect storm for a few reasons, I was the only guy on the beach besides and grandfather and his two grandchildren, it was about a .5 miles down a cliff with no cell reception, and there was only one house on top the cliff. I ran to the water and when I got to chest level, the water was pulling so hard, the only thought in my mind was 'I'm not getting out of this if I go in' I go in with a foot long floating thing we found on the beach, I tell my one friend to get in of he can and he does. We either drift along the cliff line where there is no beach for miles or we drift out to open ocean.
So I'm out there with a guy who is 5'8, 230lbs, I'm 5'7 at 170 who just had shoulder reconstruction surgery 7 months prior, and he is freaking out, swallowing water from 8-9 foot waves and yelling me to leave him. I remember in the moment when he was yelling at me to 'leave him because he didn't want two of us to die and to just let him' all I could think was 'lie and make him think this is possible' (which I didn't even truly believe). So after him losing grip 3 separate times and the flotation device, I am finally able to get us to shore. Ironically, after being in the current for 50 minutes, a rescue helicopter got there 5 minutes after we got out because one of the guys grandkid ran to the top of the cliff to get a call out."
The sh**tiest part was I was going to propose to my girlfriend on that beach that afternoon, but she instead watched me almost drown trying to get our friend out. It still gets me worked up recalling it because seeing a grown man beg you to let him die so you can live is something you never forget."
Being Cooked Alive
"I work on TV broadcast towers, including some of the tallest structures ever built. I don't even count the hundreds of little things that make your butthole pucker when you're 2,000' up on a tower. The time I actually came closest to dying was several years ago while working alone in a remote area, performing a plumb and tension on a cell tower. This requires walking to all the anchor points, measuring the tension of the guyed wires, adjusting the wire tensions to the specified ranges while ensuring the tower structure remains plumb (the vertical equivalent of level) by viewing it through a transit. It was July or August 2018 in the US southeast so fairly hot and extremely humid outside. Not wearing a shirt I could see my heart pounding pretty hard in my chest and knew I should rest but I was making good time on the project and decided to press on and go finish the farthest anchor from the tower before resting. A few minutes later I smashed my finger in the tension measuring device and despite having a high pain tolerance it definitely needed some attention. While walking back to the truck I realized I was in trouble- way too hot, and several hundred yards uphill to go."
"My hearing faded out and my vision started tunneling in like it does when you're about to pass out. Had a very clear understanding of what was happening to me, I was having a heat injury and if I passed out before I made it to the truck I could die there. It wasn't a panic but a calm understanding that 'oh, paidtogethigh, your body is shutting down and you may die here today.' Thankfully I managed to reach the truck, blast the air conditioning, and recover. Was a crazy week thinking back on it, 2 or 3 days later my boss sent me to do another job at the CIA headquarters in Langley without sending the CIA my info so when I showed up at the gate they were not expecting me and of course wouldn't let me in until everything was in order."
Watch For Falling Objects
"Train derailed bc a boulder fell on the track and the whole first car was hanging down the side of a very steep hill. I was in the fourth car, it was a full 20 minutes before we could get out safely."
"Thankfully only a couple were hospitalized, and only one was seriously injured. But , dude. I'll never forget the sound the breaks on that train made."
"Edited to add bc my phone was dying when I first saw this: specifically, the oh-f'ck-im-gonna-die moment came when the E-break was pulled. I had to catch an early train out of town to get back home after visiting my now-husband at college, and so I was sleeping when I was suddenly woken up with a loud screech and my face hitting the seat in front of me as I fell on to the ground. Looked out the window, saw the first car down the mountain side, and straight panicked."
"It all turned out fine though."
Sand Storm
"While deployed I was crew on a test flight as a sand storm was moving in. The co-pilot was on the sticks, got disoriented and the ground was quickly growing closer. Luckily, the pilot was aware and took control and swiftly brought us out of the dive and into safety well before disaster struck. One of only two times I was scared during my time away."
Alive To Tell The Tale
The following Redditors could have perished at the hands of a sibling, a cab driver in another country, and meatballs.
Fortunately, they're with us to tell their story.
Delicious Disaster
"When I almost choked to death after inhaling too many meatballs without chewing enough"
"Ikea almost claims another victim."
Murder Attempts
"When my sister's friend pushed me off a dock into a deep spot. I was too stunned to realize what happened & started drowning. I'm still not sure what happened after I started sucking down water & flailing... don't remember anything after that point."
"Or even the moment my sister pushed me in front of an oncoming car for stepping on the back of her shoes repeatedly. Had a split second moment where I thought that I might as I was plummeting into the road off the side walk & then saw the car mere centimeters from my face as it screeched to a halt."
Wild Ride
"For some reason I was separated from the group I was traveling with in Mexico, and the cab driver started going in the exact opposite direction of where I told him to go. I was pretty confident of my Spanish language skills at that time, so I repeated the directions again, and he kept going, giving some flimsy, not quite coherent explanation for going the wrong way. At this point, I was terrified, but I got this paradoxical reaction where I sat forward, and very loudly - in English - told him to turn the f*!#ing cab around and go the other way. He didn't say another word, just turned the cab around and went exactly where I told him to."
I count my lucky stars I did not pass out right there underwater inside the cave that day I went scuba-diving.
I managed to make my way out of the tunnel without the useless "guide" and made it to shore and joined my friends.
I was so happy to see them.
A part of me thought at the time I was Sixth-Sense-ing and interpreted my interactions with my friends as a fabrication in my after-life...
...until I tripped over my flipper and I got a mouthful of sand after face-planting on the beach, snapping me back to reality.
People Break Down Which Things About The Early Days Of The Internet Most Folks Have Forgotten
Oh the beginning of the interwebs.
We really thought it wouldn't be much of a fuss.
We definitely did not see what was to come.
Maybe it should've stayed simple.
We'll never know.
Computers rule the world now.
The internet is God.
Let's see where we are in another twenty years.
Those were the days.
Redditor EzucraAaAa wanted to wax nostalgic about the good old days of technology and its humble beginnings.They asked:
"Redditors, what's something the internet was crazy about but is now forgotten?"
I miss the simplicity of not having a thousand apps. I'm simple.
Ah Memories...
"Search engines before Google existed. Alta Vista, Lycos, Web Crawler..."
deenali
Bad Downloads
"Downloading custom cursors for your computer. I gave my family computer so many viruses back in the '00s trying to click things with a lightsaber."
TW1103
"Amazing. I had totally forgotten about all the virusy stuff I downloaded to my home computer, purely so the cursor would disappear and reappear. My parents had zero knowhow with computers either, so likely had no idea wtf I was downloading. Cursors were cool though, despite all the malware."
AdderWibble
Collections
"During the early days of the web, when most websites weren't plastered with advertising... Website view counters."
over_clox
"Back in the day of counters, one day I went to my website and the counter was in the thousands. I just thought it malfunctioned and ignored it. Years later I learned that my website, which had a MIDI collection, was published in a newspaper in another country. I couldn't say for sure if that was true and whether it aligned with the counter change."
pupeno
The Look
"Yea the internet was simpler too, layout style I mean. I like old style HTML webpage layouts. I personally don’t like hyper modern logos and designs on interfaces. Something about old slightly pixelated designs about them home screens and app logos really made them satisfying. I’ve even went as far as seeing if I could install some extensions that could change the layout of sites, make them feel older, give them that 2000’s html look."
Original_Ad_1103
Found It
"Stumbleupon.com"
idont*uckwithstupid
"I used to waste so much time with stumble upon."
lilbroccoli13
What a strange and crazy place the internet was.
notification
"Poking on Facebook."
lamspartacus
"I had a friend that poked me and I never noticed the notification. He died. I now have this unreturned poke as a reminder that I’ll never be able to poke them back."
Klaus0225
Playtime
"Flash games."
mc_mike810
"Many flash games are not dead. BEHOLD! The flashpoint project. They have saved thousands of the old flash games in a playable format. Go forth and relive your childhood Also paging u/The_Middler_is_Here"
Jayccob
"Rip flash games... A neat alternative I've found a lot of games on is an application called Flashpoint. Check it out!"
Warlordninja100
I will find you...
"There was a rhythm game that I don't remember the name of that me and some friends would challenge each other in, and it had the song Guitar vs Piano 2 which introduced me to Envy, who was a pretty big newgrounds artist at the time. I wanna go check out their stuff again now, I'd completely forgot about them till now."
Silvervirage
GroupMeet
"Forums. There used to be so many, incredibly active and dedicated forums."
FromJavatoCeylon
"A lot of the forums I visited were ruined by photobucket when they decided they wanted paid a lot of money from their users. So many build threads and tutorials ruined."
jus_like_at
"IMDb had the best message boards back in the day. Chatting with your internet friends around the globe about every nuance in your fave movie. Man I miss that. Reddit is close, but nothing beats the olden days."
FeFiFoMums
Fun
"Do you guys remember those egg things that hatched little creatures after a while? You'd put one on your website and then the artist would update the source url with images of it hatching? There were all kinds of little fun things like that."
Sapiencia6
And those were the.... DAAAYYYYSSSS!!!!
Not all television and movies are loved by all.
A story and its characters have to appeal to you in order for you to be engaged.
It can take next to nothing for us to lose interest and let the screen go black.
Redditor BarooTangClan wanted to compare notes on all the entertainment we've said "that's enough" to.
"What will make you instantly stop watching a movie or show and why?"
I hate bad acting, writing, storytelling... I hate bad anything.
Stop Jumping
"Fight scenes with a million visual cuts. Gives me motion sickness. Contrast the absolutely masterful work in John Wick. long cuts, realistic use of weapons (mostly), 100% skill."
StabbyPants
Louder
"When the actors whisper the whole movie and you have to crank the volume to hear what's being said - but the soundtrack or some other misc noise starts blaring at a higher volume directly after."
Blaze*itch
"I basically had to watch Stranger Things up in my attic with the windows and doors closed. I was worried the neighbors would think something was wrong or be annoyed if I watched it downstairs in my single family home. It was ridiculous."
ForecastForFourCats
"spice things up"
"Love triangles out of no where in a second or third season to 'spice things up' because studio writers are hacks and their idea of relationship drama is 'potential infidelity' at all times. It's the most tired trope on the go**amn planet and the second I see it rear its head I dip right the hell out."
amalgamas
"The whole concept of a love triangle to begin with an incredibly juvenile. Any healthy functioning adult who found themselves in a love triangle would soon choose to find themselves single."
Ouch_i_fell_down
Save your lips...
"When couples in a movie/show have a fight and one of them instantly goes to a friend and end up kissing her/him after talking for 5 minutes. I cringe so hard i turn it off and never watch it again."
Dry-Mycologist3966
"This pissed me off so much in Manifest. Girl is desperate to get back her ex-fiancé, he finally breaks up with his wife to get back with her and she's like 'nah, it's not fair to your wife, let me do this other dude I just met through a calling and be pissed at you for being jealous.' Michaela was the worst and everyone acted as if she were a saint the entire time."
gingerisla
Talk to Me
"Shows where a single polite conversation could fix everything."
Horror_Librarian_133
We are going overboard with the witty repartee. Talk normal...
Shut Up
"Annoying main character, especially if it's a kid."
abananation
"Kids who have a quippy, sassy retort to everything, and everyone just kind of crumbles before their wit."
CarpetPure7924
Speak Good
"Shows where kids in high school talk like they are 30 years olds who have done everything, been everywhere, know it all and use a ridiculously flowery and extensive vocabulary in every conversation. Like, have any of these writers ever been to high school? Literally no one talks like that. Even worse is when, in addition to this, all the adults talk normal or are just plain stupid, like so weird parallel universe."
StretchArmstrong74
Nonsense
"If the movie is too dark. Not graphic, just literally dark. I lose all sense of intensity in dark scenes and I'm not straining my damn eyes trying to figure out what the hell is going on."
TheShadowOfKaos
"I've seen about 10 percent of all DC movies recently. I've seen all of the individual films in full, just actually saw 10% of each of them."
Mortlach78
"Movies in the late 80s had a lot of dark but you could see the depth because of different shooting techniques. Now you cant see crap because its a CGI fest drowned in black color so you can't see crap because you have no depth in a scene. Compare night scenes in dark alleys in 80's movies and movies now. Utter crap show in the new ones."
Bombzey
Pay Attention Storytellers
"Bad editing would be a big one. A lot of modern horror movies can't help but edit the movies like they're trailers, with added noises to scare the audience because they are afraid the script alone isn't enough to keep people watching."
ThisIsCreation
"I remember this is where the first transformers movie lost me. When the transformers are fighting at the end, it's all a big, jumbled mess of metal and I can barely tell what's going on or who is who."
1840_NO
Drama
"When they go straight to relationship drama right away when it wasn't the selling point of the show."
LightInthewater
Do better, Hollywood. It's not that hard.
I fear death.
I wake up in cold sweats dreaming about it.
I think about it in my waking hours.
It's an obsession and clearly, I'm not alone.
But there are more preferred ways to exit.
All we can do is hope to be lucky enough to skip the mercilessly awful.
Please just let me go quick and in my sleep.
RedditorCallMehRiverwanted to hear about all the ways none of us what to leave this life.
"What Do You Think Would Be The Worst Death Imaginable?"
My list of the worst deaths is long. My imagination runs amok.
Trapped
"For me? Being trapped in a small tube or cave (like the ones you have to wiggle through) and getting stuck to where you can’t move your arms. And all you can do is wait to die. I’m getting chills just thinking about it."
Stuck
"The more I hear about cavers that get stuck, the more I think that's a crap way to go."
- braydenmaine
"There’s a great YouTube channel called Ask a Mortician and this was her #1 worse way to die. I can’t remember the exact details or their names, but two well-known divers went into an underwater cave."
"One of them became entangled and died. Years later, his friend dives back down there to try and retrieve his body, the body itself is rotten and his head comes off and the other guy also becomes tangled and dies. Really sad."
- melancholybuzzard
A Long Process
"Believed to be in a coma but coherent through the whole 20 year process until they pull the plug."
weebeardedman
"Oh man this just reminded me of a story I read on here about a guy who lost the ability to move and speak but was completely conscious. Had to just lay there and be awake but trapped in a useless body. His family thought he was brain dead or something and he couldn’t communicate to them that he was 'all there.' Crazy"
habeeb51
Slow & Steady
"Being slowly impaled by a growing bamboo. It was a form of torture probably used by the japanese during WW2 against Allied prisoners."
JazzySocrate
"My uncle who served back in the day said that people would have the bamboo slipped under their fingernails because it would continue to grow still. It would just continue growing into the body."
Payness0826
Excruciating
"Rabies."
Santolmo
"The scariest part is that once you have symptoms, you 100% will die. A 100% mortality rate has to be a psychological torture in itself."
RonaldRawdog
"Not only that, you feel irrational fear. Your brain is literally being eaten apart by the virus and it fu*ks up everything on it. You can't drink water because it hurts you. You feel dizzy, present a fever, excessively salivate, everything hurts and it only gets worse. I'd rather take a bullet and die when the symptoms are still tolerable."
Santolmo
Why can't we all just go engulfed in calm and quiet?
Suspended
"Some pulpy sci-fi book I read a while back had one of the best deaths of this real piece of crap bad guy. Left to die in a drowning sea lab under the Antarctic ice, he freezes himself in a state of the art suspended animation pod with some kind cold fusion power source that would keep it running for millions of years."
"But he forgot to inject himself with the drug that would put him to sleep. So basically he is in suspended animation at the bottom of the Antarctic ocean while his mind is perfectly awake and conscious in a near unbreakable machine that won't run out of power for millions of years and nobody knows about it."
DubiousAlibi
No Cure
"As an RN I have always thought that the worst way to die (natural process) is ALS. Lou Gehrig's Disease."
randymn1963
"My mom and grandmother have Huntington's disease, which is essentially ALS, Alzheimer's, and Dementia combined into one really messed up genetic disease. I have a 50% chance of inheriting it and if I hit 40 and there's still no cure I can't promise I'll feel like continuing on with my life because that disease is absolutely freaking miserable."
DevTheDummy
Agony...
"Radiation poisoning."
binhan123ad
"The fact your chromosomes can be so destroyed your body basically lost it's genetic code and with it the ability to make any new cells. It's literally a 'dead man walking' and you slowly rot away in agony. Stuff is so unimaginably f**ked up."
yea_nah448
"What's also bad about radiation is that it affects your nerves and brain cells last, so you have everything in place to feel all the pain of the rest of your cells being destroyed."
nosmelc
Goo
"I want to believe anything that slowly kills you painfully to be the worst. Such as slowly being crushed or something where the pain is beyond compare and yet not enough to throw you into shock or unconsciousness."
Beardless_Man
"Alternatively, being rapidly crushed into goo would probably be the least painful. I'm talking one of those massive industrial hammers they use for large steel work. Basically smooshed before the nerve signals make it to the brain."
Bannon9k
Now I'll never sleep again without nightmares of death.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
Foreigners Explain Which Stereotypically American Things They've Always Wanted To Try
Most Americans think nothing of their humdrum daily activities or amenities available to them.
However, others with a different perspective might romanticize the things that are otherwise commonplace ideas and concepts for US citizens, like going to a diner or riding the school bus.
One Redditor looked to foreigners to hear of their American desires to respond to the following:
"Non-Americans of Reddit: what is an American thing you have always wanted to try?"
The things depicted in film really captivated foreign audiences.
Casual Dining
"To visit a diner like in the movies. In the middle of the night, it’s raining and just a few people there with great music from a jukebox."
– TotalAd6225
Iconic Student Transport
"Ride a yellow school bus even if I'm too old. Growing up I always loved seeing them on TV."
– infiresemo
Just Like The Ones We Used To Know
"A white Christmas."
"Living in an Australian state where I've never even seen snow in our winter, let alone experiencing that classic Hallmark movie moment of waking up to a street full of it and sitting around a fireplace while opening gifts/preparing a feast."
"Guess it's not strictly American, but the imagery and trope is something I've only really seen from American Films."
– Stoibs
They may be ubiquitous for us, but they sure seem to be novel ideas to foreigners.
Let's Be Frank
"One of the hotdogs from those little street cart things."
– Who_is_lost
Kitchen Marvel
"A friend of mine from Indonesia said, 'the food chewer in the sink.'"
"Garbage disposal."
– Mnemonic22
American Pie
"Apple Pie made by white-haired grandma, placed near window, who says 'oh dear...' as I levitate towards it."
– MegaJoltik
Pre-Game Ritual
"Proper tailgating before a ball game, the kind where there's ribs and stuff."
– SpiralToNowhere
Fried Delicacies
"Deep fried foods at a state fair. I'm from Scotland and we love to deep fry everything and I wanna know if it's just as good or better."
– fenrisulfr94
There are places to see!
Places To See
"National parks."
– nhungoc1508
"America’s greatest invention!"
– nhungoc1508
Backpacking In Nature
"I always wanted to hike The Appalachian Trail if that counts. Or see Yellowstone."
– EphemeralRemedy
New Chapters
"Being able to start a whole new life 'elsewhere' without having to leave my country and going through an arduous immigration process."
– Gmtfoegy
My cousin told me she looks forward to visiting a Trader Joe's someday when she visits America for the first time.
Her bucket list option was hardly surprising. My parents used to bring treats from TJs as a novelty souvenir gift item, and my relatives ate it up. Literally.
Let's face it. The snacks at TJs rocks.
Even store locations in New York City would have ridiculously long lines during busy hours because the West-coast-based grocer was a novelty on the East Coast.