How Often Is The Average Person Close To Death?

[Ivan the Elder]

As the title says, I have been wondering just how often does an average person find themselves in a near death experience? To make this more specific and to cover a wider range let's leave out anything to do with war and war zones. I have experiences in the Army that were near death but I will not count those.

This isn't a poll. My problem is that I have no clue just how often a person living in a first world country should expect to find themselves in situations that are very likely to cause their death. This could be anything from car accidents or near accidents to falling out of a tree to tripping over a dog kennel and striking their head hard enough to cause lethal brain damage, all of which have happened to me.

I wonder in part because of the number of times that I have been very near death is high enough that I have lost count. When I say "near death" I mean situations where the tables could have been turned to death in seconds or inches or the blue pill instead of the red pill. I mean situations where in comparison Russian Roulette is a reasonably safe hobby.

I have found myself just a few inches from going over a 500 foot vertical cliff on a motor cycle. In another driving instance my eyes must have closed and instead of blinking they stayed shut until a large truck passed me and woke me up. My eye were closed for perhaps 10 to 15 seconds. If the truck had been just five seconds later I would have hit a vertical rock wall at full highway speed instead of slowing for the very sharp turn.

Another time I was climbing a ladder just maybe four steps and lost my balance. I fell directly on my back with no injury at all. When I was standing up I noticed that to the left of my chest was an upside down 8" vertical spike in a board, pointing straight up. It was about 2 inches away from the side of my chest. Had it been just a few inches to the right it would have passed through my heart.

Another instance was when riding my motor cycle as a teen I did not see the stop sign on an unfamiliar road and was not able to stop in time. I passed through four lanes of rush hour traffic at about 40 miles per hour and did not touch any of the vehicles. I missed them by inches going in a straight line since I had lost control of the steering due to high speed wobble in the front fork while trying to brake.

Another time, and this is the most puzzling and is also why I fully believe in God, is a circumstance in 1980. While at a business meeting I noticed a trace of septicaemia (blood poisoning) creeping up my right hand. I knew this was a matter of immediate treatment as it can very quickly cause full shock and death within hours. I drove back to the town I live in and immediately stopped in the hospital. I was quickly placed on an exam table in a side room from emergency and an intravenous line inserted to give an antibiotic drip. This can take around one half to a full hour. A Vital sign recorder was also connected.

I lay there waiting for the drip and as I was rather tired I fell asleep. Then I suddenly and sharply woke up. The drip had finished. A doctor came in and did a quick exam. He was of the opinion we had caught it in plenty of time so I was released and drove home. Everything was fine and it went away quickly. About 7 years ago I was applying for Federal Disability payments rather than the usual pension which I was qualified for at 60. I then found in old medical records that at the exact time when I was in for the septicaemia treatment I had suffered full flat line, as in full stop of breathing and heart beat. I was at the most a few minutes away from full death. When I went to "sleep" and when I awoke I was not being treated in any way other than the drip. I was also allowed to drive home shortly after the drip was complete. For some reason the Vitals recorder must not have sounded an alarm or it had not been heard or when they got there my heart and breathing had restarted.

That just doesn't happen. Full cardiopulmonary arrest simply does not fix itself and is very often fatal even with the best immediate treatment. Since then I have also had three haemorrhagic strokes, none of which have caused much damage even though they look like they should. I have also in the distant past fallen 40 feet while swinging on a line over a ravine and have also had certain drugs that could have killed me because of medical conditions I have but were not known at the time. I also have had Hep C for about 47 years and have little to nearly no liver damage.

This list goes on a long way. There are quite a few other circumstances such as falling at about 60 mph while skiing the Squaw Valley downhill and a wide variety of other experiences and this doesn't count Army.

The only thing that I know for sure is that I am most certainly not a saint. Why am I still alive? How many times do people find themselves in near death experiences?

Any ideas?

 

[Friday]

Human beings are these incrediably fragile, stupid easy to kill, tough resilient sonsuvbitches. That any of us survive our toddler years, most parents can attest to it being more about luck than anything. No matter how careful you are, it's accidental suicide watch for a few years. Dozens and dozens of icewater for blood this close instances. Lotta grey hairs added. The teen years, meanwhile, most of is deliberately keep from our parents. Lol. Or they'd never let us leave the house! In and out of scrapes, near misses, countless times where an inch in one direction or the other woulda/coulda had some really drastic consequences.

Then you add in things in adulthood like motorcycles (there's a reason the nickname for riders is Organ Donors), sports, car accidents, fights, weather, illness, injury, etc.? Normal life is living on the brink of death for the whole damn ride. Hell. There is an average of 3 toothpick related fatalities each year. Meanwhile an avg 50,000 people a year in the US alone die of the common cold & flu (and we don't even blink, but 12 cases of bird flu make the news? Pop illnesses. SMH). Most of these things aren't PTSD level trauma. Just normal life. Slip getting into the bath & smack your head on a faucet.

From doing SAR work, however, people do spontaneously recover from cardiopulmonary arrest on a fairly regular basis. Damn few pull through with CPR, the stats there are f*cking low (higher than without, still worth trying if ya ain't got anything stronger, absolutely), but people drop in and out of arrest, crash & come back, all the damn time. Out. No pulse. f*ck. Aaaaand then wake back up a minute or three later, heart online again before you've even gotten them to the damn shore or deck or anywhere you can actually do anything. System reboot. Even before any kind of intervention. Interventions, drugs & zaps & o2, are a f*cking godsend... Save countless lives... But even without them? Some people are just not f*cking done, yet. (And GASP!...hey you :) Welcome back. Don't make me kick your ass, keep talking to me, yeah?) Meanwhile other people drop dead from something that no. way. on. earth. should even be considered lethal. Shrug. It's bizarre. You just can't kill some people. Meanwhile others to down with no fight at all. It's like, Yo! Knock that shit off. Get your princess ass back here right now ya lazy dumb bastard, throw a clot and I will f*cking kill you, all this work I've put into hauling you... Yeah. IDK. Good outcomes, bad outcomes? Sometimes make no damn sense.

 

[jaccat]

I'm not sure there is an average. I've had my fair share of near death experiences- serious childhood illnesses, falling out of a swing at height and landing head first on concrete (with no apparent injury), car accidents, one of which resulted in a multiple car pile up, another where the wing mirror sliced through the car past the driver and myself with inches to spare, being a passenger in a car when the driver pulled the most stupid move and got us trapped in between two articulated lorries going in opposite directions, you know...

But then for other people it just doesn't happen. There's no logic to it. And I don't suppose its something most people stop to consider. I'd guess a lot of them would get pretty freaked out if they did.

 

[Ivan the Elder]

If I were to count things like childhood illnesses then the numbers would be far, far higher. I'm not counting such things like penicillin allergy although perhaps I should since it was full blown Anaphylaxis. Flu that killed many people and many other instances are not on my personal list. I mean situations where staying alive is the least likely result, not just a coin flip. Just my strokes carry a 95% likelihood of death, about 50% each time and it goes higher with each one. Now I haven't had another in 2.5 years. Heck, I should have died at birth since I have a super rare form of central apnea that operates 24/7, not just during sleep. Most neonates die the first time they go to sleep since it is worse during sleep. I have a lot of hypoxic brain damage yet it doesn't seem to have made much difference to how my brain works. They think it may well be related to SIDS which also didn't kill me but probably should have.

My engine failed on my Cessna 140 at about 200 feet altitude but I had enough room to land straight ahead with about 5 feet remaining at the end of the runway where it drops off a cliff.

I do not believe that some people are just plain really "lucky" somehow. That just doesn't make any sense. Few of the things I describe were things that probably wouldn't kill you, they are things that usually would. I somehow managed to cheat death by tiny fractions each time. One time the brakes on a Mustang I was driving failed while I was driving down the Berkeley hills into town. I got up to around 100 mph with both feet pushing the brake pedal so hard it bent a lot. I managed to finally slow down after spinning two full rotations in the middle of the road without going off the cliff side. When I finally came to a stop I was maybe one foot from cruising into traffic on Ashby Avenue.

It seem ridiculous that I am writing this. I should not be here. The only thing I can figure is that God doesn't want me dead for some reason. He hasn't told me why. I also don't seem to have PTSD from all these events. Mine is now clearly CPTSD of Abandonment. My primary trigger is anything that is to do with my ex wife that left me without prior notice of any sort and no clear reason after 44 years married. My main reaction to triggers is full blown crying with almost no control of my emotions. The lack of control is very possibly due to a disconnection from the left and right sides of my brain due to one of my strokes or from the hypoxia or both. But still, I just can't figure out why I am still here. I can guarantee one thing. I am not suicidal. No way am I going to kill myself when the Father seems to want me alive. There must be a reason.

 

[hodge]

I've been really lucky, too. I don't have as many near-death stories as you guys, but one is from when I was 16. I came home from school one day, sat on the couch, felt ill and sleepy. I was certain that if I fell asleep I would die. My grandma was living with us and called my mom, who took me to the emergency room. My blood pressure was about 60/40, veins had collapsed and the nurses spent what seemed like hours trying to get an IV in me. Finally, when they got an IV into the back of one hand, I felt safe enough to fall asleep. What was it? Low blood sugar and a kidney infection.

Another time I was seconds away from falling sleep, about 19, still living at home, when I heard noises outside my window. I looked out and it was my ex-boyfriend trying to climb up the front porch to my window. I jumped out of bed, got my mom and brother downstairs, called the police and they got there just in time to catch him on my bed with a knife. If I had ignored the sounds and gone to sleep, we could have all been killed.

 

[joeylittle]

My problem is that I have no clue just how often a person living in a first world country should expect to find themselves in situations that are very likely to cause their death.

Every person, all the time - life is full of near-misses, the ones we see and the ones we don't. We are proportionately less likely to die of malnutrition or thirst or civil war, that's the difference I'd guess there is between the third world and the first. But almost anything can kill you, me, anyone. You seem to have had your share of scrapes with danger. But if I counted them a certain way, and discounted my trauma event, I'd easily have at least 30, that I'm aware of. Yes, they are the times I almost drove off the road or was hit in a dangerous way, the time I was dosed wrong in the hospital, the times drowning was a reality, those five inches to the left or right or up or down moments. Icicle falling off a building. And I'm sure I'm not unique. The older you are, the more of them you get.

This is your fallacy:

I should not be here.

I'm speaking to myself as much as to you, because I hold this belief. Given the nature of my trauma, it's kind of amazing I survived. And I don't think I should still be alive. But there is no 'should' or 'shouldn't' in that particular equation - I'm just alive, you're just alive.

Anyway, that's what I believe.

 

[Ivan the Elder]

There is one other thing about all of the events I have so far described. They never felt like trauma to me, just things where I somehow managed to beat the odds each time. I remember them because I have a memory of most of the days in my life with the likely exception of things below 1 year old where I only recall one thing and things that I am still intentionally hiding from myself. That is some amount of the severe physical and sexual abuse I underwent from about 2 years to 16 years old. Then my parents split and my real home disappeared. I left then and was never able to return until I met and married my former wife. Now that home is also gone as is she. The way I now feel about that is as if it had burned to the ground along with her, my dogs, the house, and all the trees and my shop space full of antique tools I collected. I just have a little bit left of my tools. That is all that has survived. I can't even consider going into the valley we lived in. That is more than enough to fully activate my PTSD. So are the many thousands of pictures I took over all those years. I feel like I should destroy them all. Looking at any of them hurts like hell.

Instead of me dying everything that I had has died. That is how it feels now. A major problem is that my ex isn't really dead. I still must deal with her at least until the house is sold. It feels like it would be easier to deal with if she actually had died. Then there would be some finality.

Something I do not have and never have had is any trace of dissociation. It just doesn't happen. That is supposed to be a way the brain protects itself but it doesn't happen in me. Instead I have far too good a memory and it is nearly perfect for every moment of every good and bad thing that has ever happened in my life, except some things I have managed to mostly hide somehow. I remember things down to tiny details. Example: When I saw my first counsellor the first time about six months ago she drew a diagram on a piece of paper. Right now I could draw the exact same diagram including the X she drew with circle drawn around it starting near the top and not quite a circle in a counter clockwise direction with the end of the circle overlapping the starting point by about 1/4 inch and slightly higher by a few pencil widths than the beginning point. This is how good my memory is. All of my memory is like this. I can pick any day in my life and then it is like replaying a high resolution movie. It just keeps running until I work hard to distract myself from it. The longer I let it run the more detail I get.

This is not easy to deal with.

Church and the people there are helping me a great deal and that is very good thing. Without that I would be in very bad shape. I am also very lucky that the senior priest there is also a retired doctor who specialized in brain damage. I also have a new counsellor and he is a dedicated Christian so that is also helping in the two sessions we have had so far.

It would be so easy to feel suicidal but God totally prevents that in my mind and I cannot see that ever changing, thank God.

 

[void]

As the title says, I have been wondering just how often does an average person find themselves in a near de...

The average person does not have the number of 'close calls' that you have had.
Your number is very high.
I'm sry to hear how painful your life has been.

 

[Ice_Fire]

I don't know, I guess there's been a few. There are for everyone, but most of the time people don't give it a second thought. It's as if we have to NOT over think it because if we did, nobody would get past putting their trousers on. (Stupid number of people die putting their trousers on, seriously).

Technically, I was still born, not breathing, blue, all the rest of it. Since then, discounting the trauma, abuse that easily ought to have killed me on multiple occasions...there's been loads of things. Fell off a swing and landed flat on my face, inches away from an upturned rake. Kicked a ball over the fence into a lorry park, nearly got reversed over, banged my head on a goalpost but didn't even have a concussion. Lost control of a bike into a fence that had previously been electrified but was broken that day. Near miss car accidents, weather turning dangerous on an otherwise safe walk. Knocked off my bike, hadn't been for the helmet or the precise angle of the landing I'd have been toast.

I guess though, we just dismiss these things necessarily because otherwise we wouldn't live at all.

 

[Gadgie]

Geez! you sound like you are just as accident prone as myself, I've had a few "near things" and an out of body experience, that I had many years ago, when I was nine years old?

That was really spooky, I never mentioned that to anyone for most of my life. Then one night we were watching a program on TV about that subject, and I told my wife about it.

I was always too scared to mention it to anybody before, but I was so close to my wife, I felt OK about talking about it with her, I wish she was still here, with me.

 

[Ivan the Elder]

I guess though, we just dismiss these things necessarily because otherwise we wouldn't live at all.

That's about right for nearly everything that has happened to me. The one that really stands out though is how I somehow came back from the dead by totally spontaneous recovery from cardiopulmonary arrest. I have done a little research on that and it isn't common and it isn't rare either. It just doesn't happen.

From a study where they searched medical journals from 16 countries from the time the journal started to 2008:

A total of 1265 citations were identified and, of these, 27 articles describing 32 cases of autoresuscitation were included

No cases of autoresuscitation in the absence of cardiopulmonary resuscitation were reported.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/721060

In my case I remember everything except when I was out, thinking I fell asleep and then woke up. I didn't find out what really happened until about 7 or so years ago when I got my medical records. At no time was there any evidence after I woke up that any special action had taken place. When I woke nobody else was in the room. This is almost kind of scary. What the heck am I? Lazurus II? It was when I saw this that I finally decided for absolute certain that God does exist. Regardless of what may have really happened it is convincing to me that something out of the ordinary happened.