What's the most dangerous situation you've been in?

I'll share two, once as a kid and once as an adult.

Kid: As kids, my neighbour (female), elder sister and myself hung around a lot, but I was more or less the one picked on because I was 3-5 years younger than them both and the opposite gender. We loved to ride kids though and loved to explore ... this was back in the late 80s/early 90s so definitely no GPS/mobile phones. Anyway, so we rode into this new housing estate not from far our place (we lived on the cusp)....for some reason we just liked to visit unfinished houses and imagine what it would be like to live in them. Oddly, many weren't fenced back then. Anyway, it was deep in winter and about 7:30pm ish so very dark and only half the street posts were lit....we strangely noticed a very odd fella in a car circling us, luckily for us, we knew the streets inside out - he was actually right on our heels when we rode into this bike path that cars could not enter and it led to a bridge that crossed a (back then under construction freeway). Safe home and sound but I'm pretty sure he was up to no good...right time right place as we were right near the bike path.

Adult: Hiking in Japan - start of winter. Pretty much as you'd predict, wife and I (newly weds at the time), got lost back in 2012 during our honeymoon. Didn't have a mobile phone in Japan as we didn't think we'd need one. Got off too far off the beaten track and under estimated how quickly night falls and how cold it can get. Definitely got lost off the beaten track and seriously started to worry. Had no supplies, so hungry, cold and lost. Wife started to seriously panic but I was more head strong, we also wasn't really equipped for Winter...just Kathmandu jackets. Though it would get worse if we started to venture even further into the wilderness in the dark so decided to "camp" for the night and have better luck tomorrow in some daylight. Slept on ground or whatever sleep we could get and started to make a start at 5ish in the morning. Funnily enough we were only about 2-3kms trek from where we started the hike. I guess wasn't really "lost" or as deep in the forest as we thought but still scared the hell out of us. Needless to say the next day was back to the hotel for a full rest, told the hotel owners of our ordeal, they thought it was funny but got a free dinner that day! Spent all day in the room with the heater on full blast.

 

I used to live in Papua New Guinea and could write a novel about it not sure where to even start. I might come back later with some stories.

 

Scuba diving, 30 meters down and suddenly running out of air. And now don’t trust hired gear.

 

Used to work for a company who had a lot of dealings/work in PNG. My boss (CFO) hated going there for business trips. He said being a Caucasian there was a serious high chance of being head hunted (not the corporate sort) and it was bodyguards 24/7 living in a high security compound with no one allowed to enter/exit without bodyguards, he said it wasn't a joke.

 

Yeah it’s a bit like that, particularly in the city. I didn’t have body guards and wasn’t in a compound during the day as my job involved running around the jungle in the highlands. Was pretty fun most of the time. Air travel over there is the biggest concern, planes and choppers go down quite a bit.

 

OMG

 

I spent 5 mins on Whirlpool once and learned doomsday is near and sold everything I have. I now live in an internet cafe.

 

Came within half a metre of being crushed between a runaway 4WD and the house ... fortunately it only ran over my foot (broken) but the round garbage bin, next to me, was semi crushed and showed how close the vehicle came

 

Walking around the neon -lit -red light area ''De-Wallen'' in Amsterdam about 40 years ago at 2 in the morning and 2 Moroccan Gentleman both pulled a knife on me and wanted my wallet ..

Gave them the one i had which had very little money as all the cash passport ect was in the safe at the backpackers ,pity because they intend to move De-Wallen outside of Amsterdam ..

 

These stories above make my motorcycle crashes seem lame.

So once upon a time, back when I was 18 and the first time my parents let me out of their sight, I went on a cruise to the South Pacific. My idiotic parents would not allow their daughter to get "ripped off" on a regular P&O passenger cruise, o no my father knew better. He booked me onto a Russian cruise ship, the one that later sank.

The passenger ratio was seven single young people under the age of 25, to 693 single men over the age of 60. I was seasick before we got out of Sydney Harbour. First stop was going to be Port Moresby, but it didn't occur to me to attend the pre-shore visit talks each night because, well, I already knew everything, as you do at that age, and I certainly knew all about New Guinea from my father who talked a lot about the war and how nice the locals were.

My well tanned skin, dark brown eyes and long thick curly hair was helpful, but my school friend's white-as skin, blue eyes and straight hair attracted plenty of attention . All I remember from our adventure was lots of smiling faces coming up to greet us and the most amazing sunset. When we were finally back on the boat with the other kids, they were shocked to hear of our all day adventures wandering around on our own in the same area that 2 tourists were murdered the week before. The old men going off to visit Coral Sea battle sites were way more scary.

 

California Owens Valley - hang glider caught in massive lift off the scale, sucked up to over 15000ft, vario screaming. Two fighter jets from Edwards Air Force base flew underneath me, glider of a guy flying nearby disintegrated, mine didn't (Australian made), flew out into the desert valley and landed. A kid on a motorbike appeared out of nowhere and gave me a beer.

 

This sounds something that you'd expect from a soft drink or beer commercial haha.

 

i reckon you have my best ones beat , but i suppose it is a matter of what you call dangerous ,

the ones when you lose skin and such or the very near misses where it could have been a messy funeral , but there was a good decision left to make

cheers

 

Diving Bikini Atol in 2018. This is where the USA did their nuclear testing on battleships in the 1950s, it's about 22 hours by boat to the nearest inhabited island (which is 5 hours flight from Hawaii). Probably the most remote place I've ever been, you live on a dive boat for 11 nights.

For several days, we had a pack of Tiger sharks following the boat. Returning form one dive, I had a longer than normal decompression stop at 9m. The 9m station was on the moring line at the from of the boat (picture below). The sharks were keeping their distance from the group, but watching closely.

The other divers with me finished their 9m stop obligation a few minutes before I did (different equipment). The swam to the back of the boat as a group. I had to stay at the moring line or risk decompression sickness.

When my 9m timer ended, I had to swim about 40m to the back fo the boat to the 6m stop (photo below). I had three very large friends to escort me (third photo). Longest swim of my life.

TLDR: Scuba dived on ship wrecks sunk by nuclear weapons, whilst being stalked by Tiger sharks.

 

Holy crap.

 

They were on closed circuit, I was on open circuit. Hence their profile was faster than mine. They wanted to get out of the water asap on account of the big fish nearby.

Keep in mind this was on a liveaboard holiday, where the people you're diving with aren't always the people you'd choose to dive with. I also tend to dive tech profiles and plan the dive on the assumption that I need to be self reliant