Redditor tartar-buildup was curious to hear about the most unexpected and memorable moments people knew they had to leave right away, leading them to ask:"What was your biggest ‘we need to leave... Now!’ moment?"
Unwelcome Visitors
"Was 15/16 at a house party with my good friend, another girl."
"There were some gatecrashers who turned up, which weren’t unusual at London house parties, but these guys were older, and there was just a vibe."
"I looked at my friend and said to her 'I’m gonna call my mum and dad to come get me do you want a lift?'"
"My parents were always amazing and said to me that if I was at a party or out and for ANY reason didn’t want to be where I was I could call them and they would come and get me."
"My parents turned up, coats on over pyjamas and took us both home."
"Apparently half an hour after we left, someone was stabbed and lots of stuff was stolen and people beat up and held up at knifepoint."
"I had such a feel in the air that I’ve hardly felt before or since and KNEW we needed to not be there."- AliceLovesBooks
Came Out Of Nowhere
"I used to drive for Lyft. April 2018, I picked up a young couple from a bar at about 1:30 am."
"They were fairly chill and I figured it would be my last ride of the night."
"The dude asked me to stop at a corner store on the way to their destination so that he could get cigarettes."
"I didn’t see any harm in waiting so I stopped, and had a nice chat with the young woman while he was in the store."
"He ended up being about 5 minutes since everyone was trying to get their pre-2 am beer."
"When he came out, he asked me to take him to a location that was in the opposite direction of their destination, but was only about a mile away."
"He said he wanted to meet some friends real quick and grab some beer."
"Since I figured it would be my last ride of the night, I said ‘f**k it, why not’ and drive him over there."
"Now, I know the town we live in fairly well, but the direction that we were coming from was not a way I was used to going when I would go to this location."
"So when I turned onto the destination street, I missed the turn into the complex parking lot."
"I just came to a complete stop since the roads were empty and asked them if they just wanted me to park on the street or pull into the complex."
"This is when the two of them started arguing, as he suddenly wanted to go in and hang out for a few minutes while she didn’t want to go in at all."
"She just wanted him to do his thing and get out of there so they could go home."
"And then something hit my car."
"The sound is unmistakable to me, so I immediately started to look around to figure out what it was."
"But there were no other cars on the road, so that couldn’t have been it."
"Then I moved to the next thing on my mental checklist."
"If something didn’t hit me, then what did I hit?"
"But that didn’t make any sense either as I’d been in park and couldn’t have hit anything."
"It’s at this point that the young lady’s attitude completely changed."
"She just kinda looked around, and then said ‘Can we just get out of here? It hurts and I want to go home'."
"This was odd to me as she’d been sitting in my car for about 10 minutes at this point and hadn’t said a word about any kind of pain."
"She followed this up with ‘It hurts and I can’t move,’ put her had to her back, and pulled it out covered in blood."
"What. The. F*ck."
"So the guy starts freaking out, thinking that something in my trunk had exploded, but it was empty."
"As he reached over to tend to her I noticed something white sticking out of the seat."
"This hadn’t been there at the beginning of the night, so I asked him what it was."
"He pulled on it; it was a piece of the filler fuzz from my seat."
"It came out of the hole that had been made in the seat."
"Because she’d been shot."
"As soon he grabbed that fuzz we both had the same realization."
"He slammed shut his door and I drove them straight to the hospital, which was only a couple of miles away."
"That realization, and the follow up realization of ‘oh, someone could still shoot you while you’re sitting here’ was one of the most terrifying things I’d ever experienced."- akabuldozer
Lucky They Stayed Up Late...
"About two months ago I’d stayed up past my usual bed time and as soon as I got in bed I smelled something odd and was hearing some inconsistent banging and clattering from downstairs."
"I don’t live in a great neighborhood, so none of this was unusual, but I got out of bed to check anyway and saw flames licking up the side of the building."
"Yelled at my wife to get out of bed and threw on some clothes and we high-tailed it out."
"Our building has a shared wall with the next and that one had an apartment on the ground floor fully engulfed by the time we made it outside, ended up condemning the whole building."
"I was the first one to call 911."
"Have been jerking myself awake in the night pretty consistently since then."- UglierInside
Easy Prey...
"I was waiting for an Uber on the outskirts of Atlanta with a couple friends around 10pm."
"We were just shooting the sh*t after leaving a nearby restaurant and talking about what bar to go to."
"A disheveled older man walked up a few feet behind one of my friends and struck a weird pose for 2-3 minutes while looking in our direction, and there was no one else around."
"Then he walked off without saying a word."
"He came back a few minutes later and sat down on the sidewalk about 5 feet away from us."
"At this point I'm just wondering if he wants something from us, because there was absolutely no other reason to plop down that close to us on an empty sidewalk."
"Then a small sedan pulls in a nearby parking lot, parking behind some bushes in the spot closest to us and consequently furthest from any of the shops in that lot."
"I only noticed because I happened to be facing that direction, but then saw 6 guys pile out of the sedan and immediately cross the street directly towards us."
"I realized there were not any shops or restaurants still open nearby."
"It suddenly occurred to me that the strange dude might have been sizing us up when he was watching us earlier, and he came back to 'mark' us."
"We were all dressed nice with smartphones out and watches visible, basically the fanciest stuff we had for a night out."
"Right as I started to speak up that we should head back towards other people, our uber pulled up to the curb."
"As we drove away, I watched those 6 guys talking in a circle where we had just been standing, and then they crossed the street again and got back in their car."
"I'll never have a definitive answer, but I'm pretty sure we were 10 seconds away from some unfortunate shenanigans."-Zeethro
Shopping
"Grocery shopping with my grandma, she’s tired (normal for her) but she’s getting a bit slower and dragging her leg more than usual. At the checkout counter I saw her face was a little droopy and I said we are leaving now and going to ER. They gave her a bottle of water for the car ride which she ended up choking on and vomiting up all the water. Called ahead to ER so they were ready and they took care of her ASAP, she was having a stroke and they were able to help her quick enough so that she didn’t have any long lasting issues."
Reddit
"Remember FAST"
"Face: Smile and see if one side of the face droops."
"Arms: Raise both arms. Does one arm drop down?"
"Speech: Say a short phrase and check for slurred or strange speech."
"Time: If the answer to any of these is yes, call 911 right away and write down the time when symptoms started."
Reddit
Doll
"New years eve in Moscow. I (dark haired brown man) was drinking with my SO (blonde white woman) in a bar getting friendly with some locals who tried their best to speak English. So friendly that one of them gave us a matryoshka doll that he was going to give to his mother later that night."
"They seemed a little too friendly, and maybe they just were, but at one point I went to order more drinks and the bartender (who had been watching and serving us) gave me a stern look and said, “you should leave... now”.
"I found this a little strange and unexpected so naturally tried to question what he meant, but his face was drop dead serious. He looked at the friendly group, then at my GF, then to me and repeated his words."
"I didn’t really want to take any chances in Russia and wanted to see another bar anyway, so I grabbed my girl, the doll and promptly left."
neanderthalensis
Bad Roommates
"I was in college when I had my first solo apartment. This guy across the hall would come over, or invite me over, and we'd hang out a few times. However, I would not call him a friend."
"One night he asks me to loan him some money. In addition to not wanting to loan him money, I don't really have any, so he proceeds to ask for a ride to see his girlfriend because she has some money for him. I agree."
"We arrive at her apartment and a small party is going on. When we walked into the party everyone immediately shuts up and stares at us. He runs off to find his "girlfriend," who I find out is his ex-girlfriend. It is awkward because I'm kind of this guy's friend by association, and I'm getting lots of angry stares. He gets into an argument with her and we are basically thrown out of this place."
"He then asks if I can take him to another part of town. He owes another guy some money and needs to go talk to him. We proceed to an unfamiliar part of town, and he instructs me to park in a fairly isolated spot. He explains that he doesn't want the other guy to see my car...BECAUSE HE MIGHT TAKE IT. He owes this guy money for gambling or drugs or something else bad, and he is way behind on his payments. I left him and spent the rest of my time in that apartment avoiding him."
enephon·
Not Taking A Chance
"Was in Mexico City with family including two daughters. Grabbed a cab on the street around 10:00 pm to take us back to the hotel. I was somewhat familiar with the area since we had been there four or five days already. Cabbie totally passes the hotel district and starts heading away from the part of town we were in. Streets were getting more and more residential. I demanded that he pull over and we GTFO and walked back to the hotel, probably 3 or 4 miles."
"He was probably just padding the fare, but I was not going to take a chance on being kidnapped so we flew."
Choose_2b_Happy
Airshow
"Sknyliv airshow catasrophe"
"I was 5ish at a time, so it's my dad's story more than mine. You can google the details, but long story short, my dad saw the plane jolt in the air, and he realized that something went wrong and started running and yelling at everyone else to run. I was sitting on his shoulders, so he just took off with me. The plane crashed into the crowd killing 77 people, 35 or so children among them. Not us."
Polylactic
Surge
"I work as an engineer in a data center cooling plant. We’re responsible for basically everything in the building- mechanical, electrical, hvac, plumbing."
"So the engineer I’m relieving tells me there’s an odd sound coming from the Con Ed vaults- this is where these huge transformers are that step down from 26,000 volts or so to a voltage the building can actually use- we are not allowed in those vaults, they’re locked and only Con Ed has they key."
"So he leaves, and I take a walk by the vaults- I had never actually heard electricity arcing through the air before, but I knew I was hearing it then."
"I called Con Ed’s emergency line and told them to get out there ASAP- a crew of two guys show up, they seem calm and disinterested in the elevator on the way up- “it’s probably just a contact chattering” they said."
"We get off the elevator and start heading down the hall- the sound was WAY louder now, we weren’t even near the vaults and there was no mistaking it. Both guys stopped dead in their tracks and kind of hunkered down. I saw the color drain from them."
"Wasted no time getting back in that elevator. If you’ve never seen video of a large transformer explosion, go check YouTube. These transformers are not like the ones you see up on utility poles, they’re as big as a couple of trucks stacked on top of each other. Anyone on the floor when one of them cooked off would be gone, and we have 8 of them."
blind30
Sometimes, the most reliable things we can trust are the hairs on the back of our neck.
The minute they start to stand, it's often a sign that we might very well be in danger.
When this happens, the best thing to do, more often than not, is to get out.
