Ask Lemmy

Went looking for mushrooms in the woods with some friends. A few meters off a trail we found a rusty metal pipe sticking out of the ground. Looked like someone threw some chemical waste out. We tried to open it, to pull it out, we put a stick in (I get sweaty palms writing this down right now) and smelled the strange liquid. It didn't work so we went home. One friend send the location to the local waste authority. They called a day later, it was a phosphorus bomb dropped by the British during WW2, it was still active and had to be defused. Fuck me! This was not deep in the woods, people walked by in plain sight for decades.

The biggest?

That time we dodged a Scud ballistic missile. I don't mean we saw one get intercepted or had one land nearby and just watched. We actively dodged it.

So there we were in Iraq in 2003. We're outside Al Najaf and the battle for the city is raging. There are artillery rounds going both ways, planes dropping ordnance, and thousands of civilians leaving the city on foot. Mostly we ignored them because we had a job to do. But one guy turns around suddenly and starts walking back into the city. Several of us noticed him and started asking the others around us, "is he?... Is he pacing? Did he turn around just to the side of our position?"

The consensus quickly formed that, yup, he was walking in a way to count his steps and get a distance measurement. Our leaders called up the chain and a plan quickly formed. If it was nothing then there wouldn't be an interruption to the battle anyways. The second the sun was down we moved out to a new position in complete light discipline. Nobody was allowed any light but what they could get through a night vision device. Not even the IR flashlights and markers.

In our new position everything was normal until around 0300 when a huge explosion went off right in our previous fighting position. They had indeed launched a SCUD based on one man pacing a distance measurement, and they were accurate. If we hadn't moved that night then I wouldn't be here.

So we dodged a Scud Missile.

I love the Americans in this thread answering the question literally

High school girlfriend was a bit intense and told me she wanted me to marry her and that she wanted children. I was 16 at the time. I was terrified by that, because you know, 16, and she got mad at my nervousness. She dumped me a week later and wouldn't you know it, married less than a year out of high school with now 3 kids.

I went on to get my degree, move far far away, get a much better job and a much better partner. I think back to who I would have been if teenage me had let myself be pressured into that. Small town, working at the gas station or pizza joint, supporting 3 kids...

Russian military draft.

Haven't told anyone this and it's peanuts compared to other stories, but I was driving home the other night and had to stop quickly at a red light. I didn't "have" to but it was that perfect timing of "do I squeeze through and the guy turning left shakes his fist, or do I stop (noone behind or in front of me) and just chill."

So I stopped, and holy shit an 8' square tube of steel I'd had strapped to the rack of my truck launched itself into the intersection, clattering to the ground 30' away.

Nobody noticed. Not the lady in the lane to my right, not anyone driving cross traffic (they all started driving by it like it wasn't there) and not even the guys coming towards me turning left, who did drive over it.

I could have killed someone. If there had been a car in front of me I could have been the villian in a real life horror movie... Like that video of the guy who's mother gets killed in the passenger seat beside him when a brick comes through the windshield.

I don't believe in God. But fuck me, if I never win a lottery ticket or raffle or even a coin toss again I'll still consider myself damn fucking lucky.

Stupid. And there wasn't a reason for it.. I checked those straps before I left that day. Something about the rain and I don't know what caused it to come loose. But I didn't have to be carrying that thing around. I was just lazy and storing it there until I could use it.

I'm sorry to everyone. And I'm so lucky noone was hurt.

Shortly after getting my driver's license, I stupidly merged onto a road with a 40 mph speed limit without looking left.
A car was coming right towards my driver's side door. The driver of the other car made their brakes squeal (this was before ABS). Right before they would have hit me and probably killed me (this was before airbags), they released their brakes, swerved around me, and kept going.
It was some really impressive driving, and it likely saved my life.

As an EU immigrant, left the UK after the Leave vote but before Brexit and Covid.

It's not a bullet but more like a whole lot of bullets.

Mind you, most of it was entirely predictable back then.

12 ga, not sure if slug or shot.

Gun was held to my head for 20-30 mins during some gang stupidity involving a family member not wanting to leave a party I was supposed to pick them up from. I left, came back and the place was crawling with police and EMS. The same gun, held by the same guy was used to shoot another person in the face.

I ended up having to give statements, got subpoenaed, and myself, family, and friends being threatened by same gang for a number of years.

Large outlet center on interstate 40 in North Carolina between two metropolitan areas needed a Spanish translator. I applied and interviewed, having spent significant time working IT jobs in South America. They asked if I spoke Mexican. I said no, I am working proficient in Spanish. They said sorry, they were looking for someone who spoke Mexican.

Realistically, I'd say my worst in recent memory was nearly getting smoked by a red light runner at some stroad intersection. Only thing that saved me was my own incompetence; I believe I was dicking around on my phone waiting for my turn at the light, and that hesitation delayed me just enough to not get wrecked.

The one I'm more likely to tell people in a casual conversation is nearly accepting a job as a professional Salesforce consultant.

I was watching some amature tree removal people rig a pulley system to a tree that partially fell over from about 50 yards away with a few other people. They hooked it up to a pickup truck and drove forward at full power. The pulley snapped and landed behind me on an incline a fraction of a second later. I felt the wind from it go over my head and sort of visually noticed it go by in the same way someone would notice a cannonball go clear across a field in an instant. It was most certainly going fast enough and weighed enough to completely demolish my skull and everything inside. Very surreal, we opted to leave them to their work after that.

Not having children with my (now) ex-wife. Thankfully found out her true nature before that happened. I don't know what I'd do if I had to co-parent with her and deal with her on a regular basis. So I'm thankful I could just split our shit 50/50 and then forget I ever knew her.

Almost went to college for art, decided last minute to do engineering instead. Still ended up getting heavily involved in art later in life because I had the financial freedom from tech to do so

I've left two companies before they went under.

Avail Vapor, was the most memorable.

A company that bet everything on vaping being this bougie, upscale thing similar to hookahs and built 100 stores across America(I helped).

Then it all came crashing down once people were just cool with just going to little tobacco shops like they always did, and Avail had 100 stores full of outdated hardware no one wanted.

Yep, down it went.

Riding a motor scooter through an intersection, I hear a giant crash behind me.

Turn around and I see a Jeep on its side in the lane I had turned from.

If I had been about 2 seconds slower, I wouldn't be here to tell this story.

Weekend of Sept 8-9 2001, went to a house party in long island NY with some friends from our then-town in upstate NY. Friends mom, our ride, ended up on a crack binge and the party house started getting, uhh sketchy. So four of us got out of there on foot walking down train tracks, pooled funds for a train to at least get back to NYC try to hop our train back up north somehow.

This was middle of the night Sunday the 9th, and we headed to the old liberty park after my friend in area didn't answer his door. Slept in the park one block from WTC and had my brother upstate wire us money for the train, which we took after WALKING from wall street to grand central (no money). We got back upstate Sept 10, and the following morning 9/11 happened. My friend and I were the type to have been helping people get out of the buildings, he is a firefighter now, one of the others is a nurse.

I was driving home from an event late at night on a highway. It was warm and my AC wasn't working, and my eyes felt heavy. My blinks kept getting longer until I realized my eyes had been closed too long. I realized I was falling asleep at 65mph and opened up the windows and managed to wake myself up, but if the road had been any busier I could have killed someone, myself included.

I'm guessing .30_06 or .308, but I never saw the shooter. Just heard the zip of the bullet and then the gun.

Growing up in the middle of nowhere was an experience.

Maybe 9mm?

Edit: never been in a shooting, but maybe only because i dodged all the bullets?

A firework fired at my face

Bullet Bill on Mario Kart

having kids. If I had established myself a bit earlier financially it might have happened before I saw the signs of where things were going.

My ex.

Taken literally, a gang shooting aimed at somebody about 10 feet from me. A friend nearly tackled me and dragged me into the bar I was standing in front of.

9/11 happened a couple weeks after my family and I got back to California from vacation at Disney World and it always felt like we dodged possibly being on a hijacked flight.

Not sure how big the bullet was cause the gun didn't go off.

Was in a rough neighborhood at night and my friend pulled up in his car really fast and yelled get in so I hopped in. He said the kids we were looking for, because they took our friends purse, we're waiting at the corner for us to walk. around aiming a pistol right there.

A narcissistic girlfriend. I don't know at that time. Was a hard cut from me at some point, got partly ugly and left scars.