Gunshot and knife wounds are those things that movies and television shows seem to undersell. Many times in cinema, we see our heroes or heroines get shot in the leg or shoulder, spit in defiance, then get up to hobble out of a burning warehouse. Is that really how it goes, though, when an high-velocity piece of metal tears through your flesh?
Reddit user, u/BOTJr, wanted to know from those with firsthand experience what that's like when they asked:
People of reddit, anyone here got stabbed or shot. How does it feels like while everything is happening, how does your brain and body react to it?
Pure, Uncut Pain
GiphyShot in the hip in my sleep, just remember pure pain and confusion.
Here's the crazy part, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Why? After I sat up from being hit, a bullet went through my bedroom window right where my head just was.
When It All Becomes A Fun Time
GiphyWhen I was twenty-two I was shot in the thigh with a .22 handgun outside of a bar in North Little Rock, Arkansas.
It felt like my leg was on fire.
I remember heat & pain.
Then they gave me Dilaudid. After that I was having a great time. My buddy said I acted like I was running for mayor. Smiling, asking people about their families, trying to shake hands. Then I asked the nurse for a Jameson neat and passed out before she could respond.
It's The Come-Down That Hurts The Most
GiphyI've been shot 3 times and stabbed once. I didn't notice at first, but let me tell you, once the adrenaline fades, it gets your full, undivided attention.
- Shot in the chest with low base birdshot at close range while hunting.
- Caught a stray bullet in the ankle in someone else's drive by. Participation trophy.
- Shot in the back with a shotgun. Same dude as before. I don't hunt with him any more.
- Stabbed in the side in a bar brawl. No idea who did the stabbing.
Shock And Awe
GiphyWas shot on accident by a shotgun. Shot went through the wall, hitting me in the right and left thigh, and left ribs. I did not register that I had just been shot (perhaps a mix of shock and a few beers). I was able to walk to the car that took me to the hospital, was very calm, and even made sure to grab my bag before leaving.
After waking up from surgery my entire body was aching and i could definatly tell my body had gone through a large trauma.
Laughing Off The Pain
I got stabbed through my arm into my lung.
At first I didn't know, I was just pissed a guy took a swing at me a knife in his hand. After he went away one of my buddies pointed out that I was bleeding. Once I realized I was bleeding my mind blanked out everything but the basic first aid I knew. I elevated my arm over my head then applied pressure to the wound. After that I just started laughing about it in a mixture of shock and disbelief. The scariest parts was when I was put on a stretcher; the angle they had me at made it so I couldn't breathe for a few seconds.
Luckily that subsided pretty quick. Turned out I had a partially collapsed lung. There was never really any pain other than when the stuck me with a chest tube. I felt that sh-t through powerful pain killers.
What You Feel Before Anything Else
GiphyBeen shot in the knee.
Honestly, you feel the impact before anything else. It was like someone kicked me. The pain comes a bit after the blood does. Mine started from my knee, then spread out to my thigh and ankle.
I didn't have much time to react to it, and only really had the option of a field dress at the time. It took about a year to get surgery to repair the damage. In that time, I almost went crazy from the pain.
Do You Feel Lucky?
GiphyI got shot point blank in the chest by a .357 magnum.
It burns
My left lung exploded, four ribs shattered. I felt the muzzle blast first, on my face and what not. Then felt my back open up, then felt pain travel exit wound to entrance. Stumbled back a bit, then covered the entrance wound, took a deep breath and felt bubbles. " F-ck. It pierced my lung." Was walking around on adrenaline for a minute before the pain set in.
I was coherent for about 20 mins waiting for EMTs. Feeling your chest cavity fill up with blood is strange. Also, coughing up blood like in the movies is a very real thing. Had to keep heaving to clear my airway(hurt like hell) just to keep myself from drowning.
When they finally arrived things were getting pretty distant, I was hot, and freezing at the same time. Everything was SO LOUD. But so quiet. Trying so hard to stay alive. But accepting my own fate, one struggled breath at a time.
They picked me up, my whole back ran hot with blood and I realized I had forgotten to block the exit wound. f-ck I thought I had made a mistake that I SHOULD have known about, I was trained for this... I could've saved my own life. But I forgot about that exit would and this was the end. They picked my up and my shoulder collapsed along with all my ribs, pushing bone fragments further into my lung....
That woke me up.
I was loaded into the ambulance, they put me on o2. I came back around a bit. It was just cold, but I was just fighting to make it to the hospital. I figured once I got wheeled into the ER, I had done my part, and the surgeons and doctors would have my back on the rest.
They pulled me out of the ambulance, wheeled me through the doors, and as I hit the threshold of the door, it shook me and that pain was awful.
I heard the EMT tell the ER people "we have one GSW upper left chest here, one more behind him with a GSW to the lower back(my father) They've both lost a lot of blood"
I released all the tension in my body, and everything went black. I woke up two days later.
I flatlined, Twice. Physical recovery took a really, really long time, mentally I am much better but everyone has their daysScaryTerryBeach4Adrenaline Blindness
GiphySomething I can answer, I (stupidly) started a fight at my school in year 11 (around 16 years old) the other guy pulled out a Stanley knife without me noticing and because I didn't notice, he managed to catch me on both of my arms. Because of the adrenaline I didn't actually notice I'd been cut or he had a knife at all until a teacher started pulling my arm to show me.
Life Changing Consequences
Got shot through the side of my body armor in Afghanistan by a 7.62mm round. I was lucky enough to have a clean through and through from my gut which was not fatal but has had devastating effects in the long term. I've lost around 15 feet of small intestine which has severely affected my nutrition intake and as a consequence I tend to not gain weight very well. I don't use a colostomy bag, however I may have to in the future depending on how my stomach functions later on in life. The round exited through my side which basically bored a giant hole into one of my kidneys which had to be removed. I get the occasional stomach pain which is around 4-5 out of 10; cannabis has helped some of this pain. Also I sh-t myself within .5 seconds of realizing what had happened.
When You Walk Away Like A Boss
GiphyA friend of mine got stabbed in a bar once, he can't feel pain very well so he just told the dude to f-ck off and he walked to the hospital.
H/T: Reddit
Reddit user New-Low5765 asked:
"People who work in the airline industry, what are some of the craziest things you have seen?"
Don't Drink And Tow Aircraft
"Worked as ground crew. 2nd day on the job we were issued a notice to gather."
"So when you check in every morning you’re supposed to always take a breathalyzer test to prove you can like you know, ride around the tarmack, use pushbacks on planes, etc..."
"For whatever reason this dude hadn’t taken it/got past without taking it."
"He was not sober."
"He was tasked with pulling a 370 [aircraft] into a hangar."
"He eyeballed it for whatever reason."
"So here we are watching a video of this absolute loon break the whole wing off while damaging the hangar in the process."
"Because he was drunk, insurance doesn’t kick in."
"We were promptly told that Christmas bonuses might be a bit smaller."
~ ProbablyChe
Occupational Hazard
"Someone had the tip of their finger cut off when closing the door to the plane and didn't say anything until the flight landed at the arrival gate and when the door was opened the chunk of finger fell out."
"The staff then said, 'Oh yeah, that's my finger. you can throw it away'."
"I guess he just bandaged and wrapped his own hand."
"It was about 1/4 of his finger including the nail that was cut off. The cutoff portion wasn't particularly bloody and it was really pale."
~ If_I_remember
"A plane I got on once almost left without half of its aircrew on it."
~ BeerisAwesome01
"'Let’s just go, they can meet us there'."
~ InformativePenguin
"Plot twist. That included the pilots."
~ Windyandbreezy
Excess Baggage
"Coffin with dead body inside being left off the flight due to overload without notice either to us or the family and the family realising it by seeing it while the plane was leaving and screaming to us."
~ elenivog
employee of the month ups GIFGiphyNoped Out
"Saw the pilot walk into the passenger area and say 'I'm not flying this piece of sh*t' and get off the plane."
"All the passengers followed him."
~ Jaded-Session8422
"Hell yeah, I'm following the pilot off the plane if something like this happens!"
~ lukaron
Giphy"I had something similar happen, but never got on the plane."
"It was sitting there seemingly ready but they never started boarding."
"Eventually the pilots walk off the plane and a few of us heard them say ‘This junk isn’t going anywhere’."
"Flight ended up getting cancelled a short time later."
~ potatocross
"I was threatened with [pilots walking out] multiple times a week as an aircraft dispatcher."
"Auxiliary power units (APUs) run the air conditioning (AC) in the aircraft and they were always broken down and not fixed quickly, so when the pilots show up it is hot as hell inside and there's no ground crew to connect the external AC."
"So I would get a call from the Captain telling me he is not going to fly this piece of shit because it is too hot."
"Then they'd go on a tirade about how bad the company sucks because they don't do maintenance."
"I would agree with them completely."
Giphy"Then by the end of the call they'd say they will take it but the company sucks and needs to fix the APU."
"Occasionally the captain would refuse it, but then the ground crew would hook up the AC and they would always get back inside and fly it."
"For sure there were issues that popped up where the AC had an unsolvable issue and it would result in a cancelled flight."
~ Winchery
"I’m Dallas-Fort Worth based. No APU/AC in November? Meh, whatever."
"No APU/AC in August in Texas?"
"I’m not going on that airplane. Ground just can’t keep up."
~ poser765
☣️ Bio-Hazard ☣️
"Flight diverted to my airport because a girl in hotpants got uncontrollable diarrhea from the laxatives she took before the flight to help get over her weekend binge in Vegas."
"She sh*t in her seat and down the aisle and all over the bathroom."
"Five other passengers had uncontrollable vomiting because of this and the panic on the plane from the crew and rest of passengers caused the plane to make an emergency landing."
"They ended up having to cancel the remaining leg of the flight to decontaminate the plane."
"Police were sent and interviewed her and her friends and no charges were filed. I don't know if the airline put her on any kind of no-fly list or tried to have her pay for damages."
~ If_I_remember
GiphyHighly Unsuccessful
"There were two suitcases checked in that were full of nothing but weed."
"The police arrested him in the gating area & confiscated the bags."
~ Traditional_Pair4840
"Something similar happened when I was a ramp rat back in the 1960s."
"Law enforcement was going to do the arrest at his destination."
"The weed disappeared before they got there."
~ endadaroad
Stealthiest Catch
"As a baggage handler I once had a shipment of live Alaskan crabs escape their container on the ramp."
"Flights were delayed."
"Turns out those guys scatter when they panic and try to hide under anything and everything."
~ Gregwaaah
"My significant other worked doing maintenance checks on commercial planes."
"This explains why they once found a bunch of dead crabs under the floorboards in the cargo bay. It was a mysterious mystery."
~ Highly_Referential
Avoiding A Strip Search?
"A fully naked woman just walked through the terminal and tried to walk through security like she wasn’t fully naked."
~ Commercial-Chance561
"She was just very considerately trying to make it easier for TSA."
~ TrooperJohn
"They make you take off your shoes but they don't say that's all you can take off."
~ smartguy05
Language Barrier
"I witnessed this in the security screening of a large American airport."
"And to be fair, there was a language barrier as the passenger in question seemed to be speaking mainly French, and struggling to understand the TSA agent's instructions in English."
"Female passenger (tall, attractive, and sophisticated-looking) was wearing a business suit with a pencil skirt and matching jacket, which was buttoned closed, going through security."
"The TSA agent told her she had to remove the jacket. She ignored and tried to go through anyway."
"He stopped her and told her again more loudly (that's when everyone started noticing)."
"She said no. He insisted. She refused again, and tried to walk through."
Giphy"He got angry."
"She tried to explain something but it was unclear because her English was poor."
"It went back and forth."
"They both started getting angry and frustrated. It started holding up the line and other passengers were getting agitated."
"A few people tried to intervene and explain more calmly that she needed to put her jacket through the x-ray machine."
"Finally, near tears, she blurted out 'fine' and removed her jacket, revealing that she was wearing nothing at all underneath, and walked through the screening machine topless."
~ SigmaSeal66
I'm a nervous flyer so it's not something I do often, but I still feel a little cheated that nothing this bizarre has happened while I was traveling.
Has something ever happened during your travels?
Share it in the comments.
A good friend is not always the one with whom you share laughs and fun experiences.
The friendships you want to keep include those who won't abandon you in a time of need or someone who supports you in a variety of complicated situations where not even a family member can be relied upon.
Unfortunately, many of us have experienced a time when a person's true colors revealed to us that the so-called "friend" we've always trusted wasn't one at all.
Curious to hear examples of this, Redditor Aesthetik_1 asked:
"What made you instantly realize This 'friend' is not a real friend?"
These Redditors didn't realized at the time that they were being used.
Recurring Favor
"When he only called me when he needed something. It didn't hit me until much later."
– Queasy-Location-9303
"I have one of those 'friends'. She always gushes about how we're friends but she never initiates contact unless she wants me to do something for her."
– StiffAssedBrit
The Errand Girl
"Several years back, I had a friend who introduced me to this new boy she was seeing. Maybe a year later, their relationship blew up in a fury of bs (whole other story), but by the time they split, I was equally friends with both of them. He and I were both photographers at the time, so the friendship was instantaneous."
"One day we started talking about her, neither positively nor in poor taste, just kind of in general."
"He then asked me 'when she texts to hang out, what does she usually want to do?'"
"I paused. I thought. Holy sh*t, she'd either be asking for a favour or for help with some kind of errand. I was her f'king errand girl."
"She texted me a month or two later, just a 'hey'. I never responded. She never texted again."
"I'm still friends with her ex, though. That dude is genuine as heck."
– ChamomileBrownies
Testing The Friendship
"When you decide to let them be the one to reach out. And you never hear from them again."
– plzdontgetmad
"Yup. Made plans with a friend three times, she cancelled each time. I finally told her to let me know when she was free, we haven’t hung out since."
"She was a good friend for the season, but not a lifetime."
– NoMrBond3
People were shocked to discover the moment they realized they didn't really know who their "friend" was anymore.
The Chaperon
"I had been giving rides to a girl I thought was my friend. To and from school in high school. She wasn’t really suppose to ride with other teens but due to her mothers work hours we could easily pull this off. I thought we were close."
"One day while on the way home my brakes went out. We were about 2 blocks from her gated neighborhood. I managed to roll in safely and parked at her house to call a tow truck."
"She flipped. Told me I couldn’t stay. She knew my brakes were not working as she had also been terrified when we couldn’t stop. She said she wanted to go to a movie that weekend with other friends and her mom would ground her if she saw me at the house. I offered to lie and say I only stopped there as my car malfunctioned on my way home. I had to pass her neighborhood on my way home anyways."
"She refused. Started to scream at me. She didn’t care what happened I had to go. Started to call the guard at the front gate to tell them I had broken in and was threatening her."
"I left her and that friendship that moment. I managed to roll my car slowly to a mechanic not too far away but never forgot the shi* feeling of knowing I could have been seriously hurt and she wouldn’t have cared. She wanted to see a movie. She had the nerve to sheepishly call and ask me a couple days later if I could give her a ride to school. Told her I was too busy and no longer had time… after all I wanted to help her obey her mom's rules. She rode the bus til she graduated."
– Duffarum
Unwilling Companion
"I had this friend in school. Each year there was a funfair in our city, all students received vouchers for a drink and something to eat. This friend complained the whole day that she had no one to accompany her to the funfair. So, stupid me offered to go with her."
"Once we arrived we met another friend of hers. And another, and another... until we were a group of 5 or 6 people. I didn't know anyone and was basically just walking behind them. This friend took me aside and said, 'My friends think you are annoying, and we would like you to leave.'"
"It was a pleasure to see that she failed her exams a year later."
– Auldale
There's the spirit of competition, but when it's taken seriously, we're no longer game for these friendships.
I Can Do It Better
"Constantly 'one ups' me. A real friend is happy for you."
– Complex-Half8338
"That one time I got a fake bag but she doesn’t know and then 2 weeks later messaged me that she also bought a luxury bag… Then when I got a bf, she also went to get a bf within 3 months which is TOTALLY fine but she constantly messages me for us to go on a double date. Anyways, sadly they didn’t last long :( I mentioned that I wanted to go to Cuba, she went ahead and bought herself a ticket to Cuba but I didn’t end up going lol"
– Hot-Coffee-8465
Never Steal The Spotlight
"When they loved the idea of me shining, but behind their shadow, I could never do or achieve anything above them, and when I did, they would get jealous."
– Jasssin23
"Yes! I recently ghosted a friend because of this kind of behavior. She was trying to compete about EVERYTHING. Like she bragged about how her mom’s car accident was more traumatic than my elderly MIL’s - which is not even an appropriate thing to compare. She would also try to 'outshine' celebrations of my milestones and was mean to several of my friends for no apparent reason. She was a loose cannon at best."
– thefifthtrilogy
All About Me
"ALL she talks about it herself and her problems. Granted she has a a lot but never asks about me or my life until she realizes she just bypassed my attempt to want to talk about something in my life bothering me and continued to talk about herself."
– PokemomOnTheGo
People can just be so rude.
"When I got really sick. Very few came to help."
– Tofflus1
"Same here. I got cancer and everyone I knew was over the top supportive for the first six months and then all but three of my friends just vanished. I saw one of them at a Halloween party while I was going through chemo and she told me that my bald head made people uncomfortable. I was dressed as Captain Picard, it was awesome and she ruined it."
– CatGoNoTail
Not Missing High School
"At lunch, she was sitting with her boyfriend, I was sitting with our friend circle. She came up to me, guilted me into sitting with her and her boyfriend, and then proceeded to ignore me for the rest of lunch."
"She didn't care about me, she just didn't want me talking to the friend circle that she had abandoned for her boyfriend. When I pointed this out to her, she called me a jealous b*tch."
"Ah, high school. How I don't miss thee."
– Symnestra
These examples actually served as a good reminder for me to take a moment and assess my friendships.
Not so much about how I've been treated but more about checking myself to see if I'm respecting the people I call my friends.
We've all been guilty of casually mentioning future plans to get together. I embarrassingly wait for people to initiate something, which is terrible.
Show up for your friends. Make them feel important like the individuals they are.