Redditor BBQPancake wanted to hear about the times people almost let the devil win, so they asked:
"What was the closest you've gotten to killing someone?"
Everytime someone CHOOSES not to use a turn signal, I roll the dice if this is the moment.
No Hazards
lauren conrad car GIF by The HillsGiphy"Dude was changing his tire on the side of the freeway about half past midnight, dressed in dark clothes, no hazards on, and sitting halfway into the right lane. Almost splattered that dude."
Flooded_Strand
Totally Weird Experience
"11:30 pm Remote country road with no streetlights. There’s a tiny traffic island in the middle of the road and I see what looks like a slightly different-colored silhouette standing there. By all rights, I should not have seen him there but something in my brain clicked and swore there was a figure standing there so I slammed on my brakes as the figure jumped out in front of me, car stopped about 2m away."
"He smiled really sinisterly and started walking towards the car, I reversed and made to move around him slowly and he jumped in front again, I managed to drive on the wrong side of the road to escape him."
"A minute down the road I stop to flash my lights at every passing car to warn them and I sh*t you not the second car that passed was a cop and I explained what happened. I circled back a minute later and saw the dude on the side of the road in cuffs. Totally weird experience."
HeyMrCow
SLAM!
"When I passed my driving test many years ago, I asked the instructor if he had any advice for a new driver. He warned me that if I ever saw a ball roll into the street to immediately hit the brakes because there was a good chance a kid will follow. I never forgot that and have religiously followed it ever since."
"A couple of years ago I was driving down a residential street and it happened again and something in my mind told me to SLAM on my brakes and so I did. I came to a stop just feet from a really little kid who was completely frozen in terror."
"That driving instructor is probably dead of old age by now, but wherever he is, I hope he understands that he saved that little kid's life and saved me a lifetime of guilt and heartache."
MaybeADumbass
The potatoes were stuck
"Pneumatic potato cannon. My friends and I were shooting it in my backyard. Must have launched off dozens of potatoes at this point. We decided to stuff 3 potatoes in the barrel. When we open the valve to shoot it nothing happened. We were sitting around 60 psi and had no launch."
"The potatoes were stuck. My friend went to look down the barrel. I saw what was going to happen and lifted the back forcing the barrel into the ground. At that time the potatoes shot out and left a small crater in the ground."
ELONGATEDSNAIL
I Shudder
shooting breaking glass GIF by PhazedGiphy"I was fermenting homemade kombucha in a tightly closed bottle. Which I forgot to burp. One day a bottle exploded, while my mother-in-law was in the kitchen. Luckily, she was far from the bottle at the moment and got only a scratch on her hand, but we had to dislodge glass shards from the walls. I still shudder from a thought of what would happen if she were closer."
nazanar
Closed bottles and pressure, that is a toxic mess.
Take shelter.
Avengers Unite
the avengers GIFGiphy"Every time I drive in Sydney on a weekend 4000 people either wanna walk out into traffic without looking or cycle onto main roads without pausing or merge into my lane without indicating/checking. By staying in defensive driving mode I've saved more lives than the Avengers."
RGH81
6 Inches
"Was on a film set working when a mentally unstable person with a knife approached me and another crew member."
"Was forced to take a swing at him with a gobo arm (it's essentially a metal rod with a metal knuckle on the end of it). Swung hard enough that if it connected, would have caved in this dude's temple."
"Just missed, and it coming so close must have jolted the guy back to reality and he took off. So closest I came to killing someone was about 6 inches."
Ringlovo
A Few feet from the Girl
"Used to work a delivery job. One afternoon, I'm driving back to work in the old POS delivery van and some girl bolts across the road (presumably to catch a bus that had pulled over up ahead)."
"Slammed on the brakes and came to a sliding stop completely sideways in the middle of the road no more than 2 or 3 feet from the girl. I still think about it sometimes, it was a heavy old Ford van, with no ABS. If I'd been speeding even slightly I think I would've hit her."
ZatyDaddy
Madre de Dios
"Driving a loaded truck, probably about 10,000 lb or so, at the speed limit. Traffic in the oncoming lane is at a standstill. Some [censored] decided he was too important to wait with everyone else and pulls out, face to face with me, at very short range. I swerved hard right, didn't really expect to miss him but somehow did."
"Then swerved hard left to avoid the people on the sidewalk, somehow missed them too. Didn't think you could make a truck do that. Apparently, my passenger (the owner of the truck I was driving for) didn't think it was possible either. I learned some new swear words in Spanish and what sounded like the prayer of thanks to Madre de Dios."
philzar
Fired
New Girl Facepalm GIF by HULUGiphy"High school friend's dad wanted to teach us how to shoot. Went to the range and when he wasn't looking I grabbed the pistol and tried the John Woo sideways grip shot. It flew out of my hand and the bullet ricocheted off the side wall. That was my last time to ever fire a gun."
eguez780
We really need to be vigilant.
Do you have any similar experiences? Let us know in the comments below.
Redditor Apprehensive6815 wanted to hear about the times we knew we had to flee, so they asked:
"What was your 'I need to get out of here ASAP” moment?'
I've lost track of the amount of times I've felt that feeling and fled.
ROAR
MOUNTAIN LION cougar GIFGiphy"I unknowingly walked up next to a mountain lion one morning on a hike. And I’ve never felt true fear til that moment."
_captaintripz
EXITS
"In the late 70s and I was stationed at Ft. Campbell, KY. I was off-post drinking with a buddy and we met a couple of older vets and we started talking, joking... nice time. As the bar was closing down they invited us to their place to have a few more beers. I drove a `65 Chevy pickup so we followed them down into Clarksville and ended up drinking beers in the family room while the one guy's wife and kids hung around."
"But all of the sudden the mood changed in the room. These guys turned nasty... making off-hand insulting remarks. No more jokes. Got dark real quick. I excused myself to take a leak and just as I came out of the john... I heard the guy who owned the house say to his wife in the kitchen, 'Take the kids back to the bedroom and lock the door. Don't come out no matter what you hear out here.'"
"The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I immediately got tunnel vision. I turned and ran top speed down the hall and yelled to my buddy as I whistled past the family room and out the door. I had the Chevy fired up in no time flat and saw my buddy dive into the bed of the pickup through the rear-view mirror as I gunned the engine and fishtailed out the driveway. That's my 'I need to get out of here ASAP' story and it still makes my palms sweat thinking about it."
flippenstance
No Big Deal
"I was walking home one night after the bar, on a long semi lit street. There was a man walking a fair piece back yelling at me to stop, he wanted to talk to me etc. I just kept walking thinking just a drunk dude NBD. A cab pulled up to me and stoped and asked if the guy walking was my boyfriend. I told him know I have never seen him before. The cabby told me to get in the car because that guy paid him $50 to go around to block and stop me."
"The cabby did so thinking maybe we were a couple having a fight. I got in the cab and we had to drive past this guy to turn around to head toward me house and he started freaking out that the guy didn’t stop for him. That night a cabby may have saved me from many years of therapy or possibly my life. I did not walk long stretches at night again."
yeahsheskrusty
Tarped
"I was building a cinder block wall in the winter in Canada. We had the area tarped off with a salamander heater running to keep us warm. One day I noticed my eyes were starting to burn so I looked over at the guy I was working with and asked if he felt weird in any way. When he looked at me I realized he was squinting and so was I. We were maybe 20 feet from each other. Needless to say we killed the heater and got outside the tarp. I wasn’t in the mood for carbon monoxide poisoning."
PocketSand111
Members Only
Cbs No GIF by HULUGiphy"I used to be a part of a rapidly growing cult. I knew I needed to leave when they started convincing teenagers to recruit kids at their high schools."
hermanalexie
Stay away from cults. Keep an eye out.
The Dad
John Cena Movie GIF by Daddy's HomeGiphy"My friends had a friend in high school we called The Dad. If he ever felt uncomfortable at a party and wanted to leave, we would follow. He had the best instincts and saved us from the police, random fights and other foul drama many a time."
joykilled
Wrong Turns
"I once took a wrong turn on a street in Chicago from a pretty decent neighborhood somewhere around Archer and Harlem. Anyways, I don't know how we ended up where we did but I was like 18 driving my Dad's Toyota Camry through a large group gathering of some gang all decked out in colors. Like they were literally everywhere on the street, just hanging out and chilling like they were having a block party... maybe they were, but we got the distinct impression that we did not belong on this particular street and sort of got the hell out of there as fast as we could."
DryEyes4096
Shots Fired
"I was 19 and hanging out with some work friends in Cleveland and one of the guys looked out the window and pulled out a gun and told us all to get down. I, of course, was terrified. Thankfully no shots were fired, but I excused myself after it ended and went home."
dma1965
Machete
"Was hanging out outside of my church when a dude ran by that kept looking behind him, then another one passed by that was throwing rocks behind him. When I looked what were they running away from there was a group of 5 dudes with machetes chasing them and one dead by the side of the road. Actually took me a minute to process and get inside."
MaximumPower682
Gotta Go!
Tobey Maguire Poop GIFGiphy"Major diarrhea at the airport, and the toilet wouldn't flush."
Fracture_98
Life Lesson:
Always have good running shoes.
Do you have any experiences where your instincts quite literally saved you? Let us know in the comments below.
Redditor ItzTacoTimee wanted cops to tell us about the masterminds they've taken into custody.
So they asked:
"Police officers of Reddit, who’s the smartest criminal you’ve ever encountered?"
Most of these murderers on these Dateline shows are smart.
Which is what is most scary.
Deposits
happy work GIF by Soul TrainGiphy"My favorite was the guy who stole a post office mailbox off the street, repainted it, and then put it next to the night deposit box at a bank. And hung an out-of-order sign on the deposit box. All the businesses came along and dropped off their deposits in the mailbox."
pinewind108
"release to police"
"I worked with this one guy who had a lengthy record. He had a system for getting released if he got caught. After committing a crime, if the police were in pursuit and he knew he was about to be cornered, he would act insane. His girl would play along with it telling the police that he was off his medication."
"The police would arrest him but then send him to a mental ward with papers instructing the ward to release to police once he was cleared. Once he was in the mental ward, he would cause a distraction that would make the person attending the desk with the file cabinet to leave said cabinet. He would then crawl to the file cabinet, look for his 'release to police' papers, and then would literally eat the papers."
"When the psych evaluators decided that he was stable enough to be released, there would be no instructions to send him to the police, and he would be released to the general public. He did this about 10 times until police officers noticed him back on the streets. This stunt forced the state to change their procedure for detaining mentally unstable suspects."
g_baker
When in Walmart...
"A guy I went to high school had been stealing from Walmart in a pretty clever way. He would grab video games, mp3 players, beer etc. and throw them away in a trashcan in the garden section. The workers never checked the trash contents and he would just wait, sometimes 5 hours until they emptied the trash in the back dumpster and hop in to get his items."
"Once he took a cardboard box from a display inside, filled it with video games, a PS3, and extra controllers. He grabbed some tape and pens and drew all over the box and taped it up to make it look used and tossed it. An hour later he had a whole new PS3 and stack of games."
taylorink8
"I walked in with this"
"I heard about one person that pulled a shoplifting scam on a large, popular and well known U.S. retail store. They walked in with some cheap nylon product to get one of those 'I walked in with this' stickers they used to put on returning merchandise. The sticker easily peeled off the product undamaged. They walked to the electronics department, grabbed an expensive box off the shelf and went to Customer Service."
"They placed the sticker on the big box and asked if they could return the item without a receipt. 'Unfortunately, no. Not without the original receipt.' Dang it, and they walk out. Customer service even gave the door man the thumbs up having just interacted with the customer. This took place before widespread inventory controls and cameras absolutely everywhere."
nivenfan
The Follower
Location Gps GIF by AboutMedia Internetmarketing GmbHGiphy"I'm not a cop but I worked crime scene. This guy had attached GPS to the bottom of peoples cars who owned houses, he wanted to rob. He did it to ensure they wouldn't be showing up while he was ransacking the place."
Rachcake93
GPS Genius.
Enjoy the meal...
Food Eating GIF by SpongeBob SquarePantsGiphy"There's a golf course/country club in my town that has a PGA tournament scheduled in the next couple years. They have a guy repeatedly breaking in overnight and just lounging around and eating food, all on camera. The club refuses to report it so they don't hurt their chances of the tournament coming."
somejap
Drugs & Keggers
"This was in the late 90s-early 00s."
"A guy in my dorm came to school solely to deal drugs. He took out student loans, registered for a bunch of 300-person freshman survey courses where he would never be missed, then literally never went to class. All he did was go to raves and concerts and keggers and sell party drugs."
"After the first semester, he was suspended. He wrote the usual ‘I was young and dumb and in over my head’ sob story, and got put on probation for a semester. So he had a repeat of the fall. At the end of the year, he was kicked out, and didn’t care."
"He made something on the order of $150k, in return for about $8k in student loans to cover a year of housing and tuition."
"So far as I know, he was never caught. It may have been a short-sighted maneuver in the long run, but in the short run it seemed fairly genius to effectively use federal loans to start your drug business."
whistleridge
Into the car...
"Working in a home improvement store when younger. This guy came in, went to the snow blowers, took one and went to the return desk. Said he wanted to return it but had no receipt. They told him you need a receipt so he says ok I’ll be back and wheels it off to car through the front door. He did this a few times apparently. Couple places even helped him load it 'back' into his car."
ethan-bubblegum-tate
TRANSFORMS
"A french thief who spent 10 years in prison became a comedian when he got out. One of his stories... Finds a building, goes in, chooses a floor and TRANSFORMS the exit door into an extra apartment. Puts the apartment number, fake lock, welcome rug, etc..."
"Puts an iPhone for sale. The person comes to buy it, he opens the door in a shower robe and says give me one second, im just gonna count the money... and poof!"
"He's gone from the exit stairs."
ismango
So Hungry
block out no GIF by Heute-ShowGiphy"Definitely this guy who ate the bank robbery note right off the hood of the police car when they were emptying his pockets. Although I'm fairly sure he was still convicted."
Bonesnapcall
Even with smarts, crime still doesn't sound like it pays.
Who would you add to this list? Let us know in the comments below.
