Ever wonder how things might’ve turned out if you’d taken a different route home one night? Or if you hadn’t been late to an important meeting? Or sat next to someone else on your first day of college?
Chances are, you have—and for good reason. You never really know how much impact a single moment or small decision can have. For these people, something seemingly insignificant ended up saving their lives. Keep reading to find out what happened, it’s a powerful reminder that not everything is as random as it seems.
#1
Not mine but my baby’s. Attended a routine appointment that I almost cancelled as I was so busy the day before Christmas Eve. Figured I’d just change my plans slightly as it would only take a couple of minutes. They detected a problem with her heart rate, grabbed the consultant from the car park and had her out within 17 minutes of me walking through the door. She’d gotten the cord around her neck.
Doesn’t sound a little thing reading back, but it was an additional appointment and just meant to be a quick urine dip for me. It was purely because they had a student midwife in and it was quiet that they asked if she could have a go at detecting it.
Image credits: Apollocheesus
#2
The last dog I had. The thought of her being sad kept me from committing s*****e. Still painful to think how much zoloft f****d with my mental health for the first 2 months I took it. The dog in question has since crossed over the rainbow bridge. I miss her. Tearing up a little thinking about her.
Image credits: anon
#3
Had a paper due for summer college classes and decided to ignore the call from friends to join them out joy riding.
Driver was killed in an accident that night and friends were significantly injured. .
Image credits: anon
#4
My girlfriend and I were going to go to a Christmas market in Berlin, but ended up having some emergency family issues to deal with so we abandoned our original plans for the day. It turns out someone drove a truck through that very same Christmas market that day with the intention of causing mass casualties. We would have been there.
Image credits: KnuckledeepinUrethra
#5
I was bleeding to death and my sister saved my life. She was suppose to sneak out that night too see a guy and wasn’t going to be there that morning. She fell asleep instead and was there to save me that morning.
Image credits: anon
#6
Saving my life….. I don’t know but from serious injuries is definitely the case. I work at a car wash and every night when we close we have to take the center drain crates out to clean all the dirt out of a 4 foot deep pit. One day I was closing and saw a car pull into our entrance. I remember I was walking in the direction of the car and stopped to give them the “what a d*****s” look. As I look down after, half of my foot is over the edge of the center pit. If I were to fell I definitely would’ve broken my arm and shoulder and likely my neck.
Very scary to think about. Be aware of your surroundings.
Image credits: ACh4mp
#7
My desire to skip a day at school lol, I pretended to be sick and went to dr, but ended up having an urgent operation a few hours later.
Image credits: Lisa_Kissa
#8
After work, at an intersection, I didn’t immediately press the go pedal of my car at the green light and precisely at that second a giant van passed the red light at full speed. Had I gone the second it turned green I would have had a fatal accident since the van came from my left side, exactly where we sit to drive.
Image credits: miss_poetflowerr
#9
I couldn’t catch my breath after climbing a flight of stairs and went to the emergency room, fully expecting to sit there for hours before being told I had minor pneumonia or something and being sent home with antibiotics.
Two minutes after saying I couldn’t catch my breath, I was on a gurney with an IV of anti-heart attack meds started, blood being drawn for lab work and a heart monitor being attached. 5 days later I got out with a new stent, orders for outpatient cardiac rehab, a weight loss program, six new prescriptions and the memory of my cardiologist telling me if I hadn’t come in when I did, she’d have bet heavily I’d have died that day instead of having no heart damage at all.
So not being a stubborn idiot like I usually am saved my life – because I did consider not bothering to go.
Image credits: NotYetReadyToRetire
#10
Husband and I went to the state fair with our friends. His friend decided not to get a funnel cake on our way out as it would take too long and we would miss the earlier train. Got home later and realized we missed a shooting by about 10 minutes after the news came on that night.
Image credits: Musicfanatic75
#11
Not really our life per se, but our life as in (important papers and documents, land titles, insurance papers). Long envelope with handle, never in my life did I ever think a fire would start 1 house away from us!!! Fortunately, all of our documents are compiled in one big long plastic envelope (the one you bring to school as an elementary kid, the thicker version). One swoop, and it was safe. Then, comes other things, and appliances which we were able to carry during tge fire, but cant get back after the fire was extinguished. Fortunately, the fire was quickly extinguished, but yeah, thankful to that envelope. We continued that system ever since.
Image credits: Wandergirl2019
#12
Yeah, for some reason I terribly overslept and was three hours late to work.
I felt quite bad about the whole thing. This was before mobile emails were a thing and I called in saying that I would be late. So, I walked into the office around 12 PM hoping to avoid colleagues seeing me that late. The first people I saw were the CEO and a bunch of other senior guys, all gathered around my cubicle.
“Ok, this is my last day in this job,” I thought.
However, the CEO looked at me, relieved, and said “Good morning. Good to see you were late.” Quite an unusual greeting.
Only then did I realize what had happened. The hinges holding a huge office air conditioner above my cubicle had failed, and it had gone down right into my seat. The monitor was smashed in two parts, there was a huge bend in the tower case, and the indestructible Cherry keyboard had a few keys missing and a dent in the middle of the metal pad.
The air conditioner had fallen at around 11 am, and I came to the office at 12 pm. Should I have come in on time that day, I would have never registered on Quora.
Image credits: Jaanis Kruumins
#13
Yes. I didn’t have the safety belt. So I fell from my “flying” car before it hit the ground.
When it did hit the ground, the wheel was stuck INTO the driver seat. There was no space left, as the car landed on the bonnet and got compressed to half of its normal length.
I got up from where I fell (a patch of grass, 50 meters or so away from the car) and I was absolutely fine.
It was a mistake. I still recommend wearing the safety belt. But in that particular case yes, it did save my life.
Image credits: Teodora Greywoolf
#14
Not me, but my doctor. I was 44 years old and it was the first visit to a new doctor. He ordered routine labs and checked the PSA box.
By mistake. The PSA is done at 50.
Turns out I had VERY advanced Prostate Cancer. I had surgery, lasted 11 years, it came back, got radiation, and I am in remission. With my fingers crossed.
If he had not made a mistake, I wouldn’t be here.
Image credits: Tom-S
#15
Not me, my neighbour. He woke up with a very sore back so he made an appointment with a chiropractor. When he got to the clinic it was realised that he had made the appointment with the GP instead of the chiropractor (both at the same clinic). The GP did a physical and found his blood pressure to be through the roof. The GP told him that if he’d not made the mistake and had gone to the chiropractor as planned, he would have been dead of a massive heart attack within 3 hours. Rushed to hospital, still going strong 10 years later and 3 kids still have a father.
Image credits: Jen-Jessup
#16
Yes, it was an incredibly small mistake.
I was in Iraq in early 2006–late 2007. One evening, I was parking my HMMWV. As I was walking away, I realized I forgot to lock the doors, something we were supposed to do because of the systems in the vehicles.
As I turned around and started walking back, I noticed another vehicle approaching the truck I was walking back to. A few seconds later it hit my HMMWV on the driver’s side door, the last door I would have been locking, and in the exact spot I would have been standing.
The soldier driving the other truck had fallen asleep.
From the moment I initially left my vehicle to the time the other truck hit it was a grand total of about 30 seconds. If I had not forgotten to lock my vehicle, I would have been crushed to death, likely cut in half.
Image credits: Robert-Thompson-603
#17
Yes. I was due to meet some people in a pub in the City of London many years ago. Because I got the timing wrong by an hour I missed the IRA bomb which went off. I don’t know if that really counts or not but my route to walk there would have taken me right past the blast site at just about the time it would have gone off. I heard the bang of course but was far enough away.
Image credits: Nick-Nicholas-20
#18
Antibiotics! I had a bad case of scarlet fever as a child.
Image credits: corvidlover13
#19
Moving that extra inch behind my truck. missed a bullet meant for my head that day.
Image credits: OkMeasurement7474
#20
Was once out with my boyfriend and 4/6 of my siblings on Christmas Eve. We had some appetizers and cocktails at a restaurant and decided to go a little ways across the street to a small dive bar our dad used to bartend at before any of us were born. Hit the crosswalk light and once we got the walk signal took a step or two into the road before my sister snatches the back of a few of our jackets and yells “Wait!” Seconds later a semi barrels through the red crosswalk light going way over the speed limit. Most of us would have been killed right then and there. Our parents would have had a terrible Christmas.
Image credits: Avada7Kedavra
#21
I was talking with a friend griping about the president. He got annoyed and pointed out how I never used to care about politics and was drifting towards tribalism and stupidity.
I took his advice to heart and unplugged from most political content on social media. Felt immensely better afterward.
#22
When I was in grade 12 we used to hang out at this bar (drinking age is 18 in Alberta). And I got lippy with the doorman/bouncer. He barred me for 90 days. This was in March so for the last 3 months of school I was forced to stay home and read my text books. I aced my final exams and when my suspension was up I went back to the bar. I discovered that in the preceding 3 months all my friends had graduated from doing acid and MDMA to Heroin. I noped out of there and have had a great life while all my friends from back then died young.
#23
Two AM on a Sunday morning I get a call from my alarm company that my alarm had gone off at my shop. The company advised me they had called it into the police department. They checked out the perimeter of the building, saw no signs of forced entry but high winds that night did not allow for the “eye in the sky” to check the roof top. Probably the wind had set the alarm off. I didn’t go to check it out, thinking the alarm company was right about the wind… Sunday, around noon I stopped by the shop to check it out. I entered the building to find I had indeed been burglarized, entry made through a hole in the roof. A large number of hand guns had been stolen.. After a “sting operation” by the police eight individuals were arrested and charged with the thefts. Heres their storys. One of the guys had pawned a police scanner with me a few days before the burglary. The night they broke in through a hole in the roof, located the scanner and turned it on. During the robbery someone set off an interior alarm and the alarm company notified me and the police. The thieves heard the police scanner and exited enmasse through the hole in the roof, walked across the street to a vacant lot and hid in the bushes until the cops arrived and did their check and then left. They then reentered the building and continued stealing with no pressure. It occured to me when I entered the building the next morning that if I had gone that night to check it out, as I normally do, I would have walked in on them caught redhanded and armed to the teeth with loaded firearms. These were violent criminals whose records detailed many, many incidences of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon
#24
Not my life, but I saved my daughter’s life because of a change in plans. I am a middle school band director. I had a jazz band that met after school every Wednesday. I NEVER missed the rehearsal because I LOVED that group of kids and the music they made. One Wednesday I had a splitting headache so I decided to cancel. As I pulled up in my driveway I saw my 3 year old daughter in the yard. She fell forward and I thought she was playing around. I went to her and saw her blue face and she was pointing at her neck. It was then I noticed she had a rubber string with a ball attached wrapped tightly around her neck. I pulled at it as hard as I could and finally broke it off. My wife had just checked on our daughter moments before I pulled up. Had I not cancelled jazz band I’d likely have lost my daughter that day. This has strengthened my faith in God.
#25
Some friends of mine went to a business meeting, which was a regular part of their monthly schedule. They turned up at the hotel they always booked, to be told that there was no record of their booking. When they checked, they discovered that their new secretary had booked them into a different hotel in the same chain but a couple of miles away by mistake, thinking that was the one they used.
No biggie, they just went to the other hotel. But that night, their usual hotel burned down, with loss of life in the wing they normally stayed in.
Their secretary’s mistake may well have saved their lives.
#26
When I was in my early twenties, my friends and I used to go out almost every weekend to either some party or a nightclub. Often, these locations weren’t in the most safe areas. Being young and feeling indestructible, we kind of liked the excitement of it. Normally, we would meet at a friend’s house, then all pile into one guy’s car. There was always the argument over who would sit in the middle position in the back seat. That was because there was a hump there. I usually eventually volunteered to sit there just to get us moving.
One weekend, I got the scheduling mixed up on when I was supposed to meet them. They were ready to go before I got to the friends house but agreed they would wait for me. I told them not to bother waiting and I’d either drive myself or stay home that time. I eventually opted to stay home.
The next day I get an excited call from one of my friends telling me how someone had shot into their car for no apparent reason. They were very lucky because although the car was full, the bullet had missed everyone, hitting the middle section of the back seat. The section where I’m 95% sure I would’ve volunteered to sit. I don’t know if the gunshot would’ve killed me, but I know I’m glad I wasn’t there to find out.
#27
My paternal grandfather was a seaman. He loved with his wife and three sons in Bristol.When during WW2, his ship docked in Liverpool, he took the train back to Bristol to spend his leave at home with his family. He arrived during an air raid, so made his way to the local air raid shelter ,- in the dark – and slipped down the steps, breaking his leg in the process. During a previous raid, a water main had been breached, flooding the shelter, which was temporarily out of use. (No signage,- which wouldn’t have helped during a blackout anyway!) He managed to crawl out of the flooded shelter, and attract the attention of an air raid warden, who summoned an ambulance.He was clearly NOT going to be able to rejoin his ship.The ship was part of the notorious PQ17 convoy, headed for Murmansk.It was decimated by Uboots, bombers, and life expectancy, when immersed in that icy water, was measured in seconds rather than minutes. Falling down those stairs almost certainly saved his life.
#28
August 25, 1969. I was a Marine in Vietnam. We were in a firefight and several of us were ordered to move over an old rice paddy to a dike along the edge. Once there we were to fire into a tree line to keep the NVA from moving through there. The first guy jumps up and runs over there and starts firing. The second guy goes. I’m third and when he got there I took off. The paddy had been plowed some time in the past and there were large loose clods everywhere. I stepped on one and it rolled out from under my foot. As I hit the ground I heard a machine gun open up and could hear the rounds going by over me. They had seen the first two and had got set up for the next guy. If I hadn’t tripped I’d have been badly wounded if not killed.
I crawled the rest of the way. Ended up shooting over 800 rounds that day. I started getting low on ammo when the platoon sergeant crawled by with some rounds in a bandolier. They weren’t in magazines so I had to reload my used ones. It was hard to do on my side so I rolled over on my back. I rolled over onto my rifle barrel which was screaming hot. I thought I had been shot. It really hurt. The next few days my pack rubbed that blister with every step.
Still, yet and all, it beat actually getting shot.
#29
In my twenties, I was a bit of a barfly. I would go to the bar a couple times a week.
One night I drove myself to the bar (hardly into the story and I already sound foolish). I had quite a night. I got a ride home with a friend, not because I was being responsible but because I had forgotten I had driven myself there. I woke up the next day and my car was missing at home. It took me a while to figure out what happened. Now sober, I took the city bus to go retrieve my car.
So basically, I was lucky to get drunk enough that night to forget how I got there. Any less drunk and I probably would have tried to drive home.
#30
In 2001 I was on a hunting trip with some relatives, including my cousin Bernie. He was a pilot with Northwest Airline. We were supposed to pack up on Monday morning and make the six hour drive home. But Bernie’s dad who was the driver was procrastinating. We hunted our way out of the North Dakota badlands and finally hit the interstate sometime after noon. Bernie was upset. He explained to us that he had to be in Minneapolis by five am to catch a flight to New York so he could fly a plane to Germany on Tuesday morning. I didn’t get home until about 8:00pm. Bernie still had an hour to his dad’s, then an hour home, then a three hour drive to Minneapolis by 5:00am. The next morning was 9–11. Before I even called my dad I called Bernie’s dad. He told me Bernie was at his place. He had been too tired to make the trip so he called in sick and spent the night at his parents. He then took a leave from Northwest and was activated in the Air Force Reserve where he stayed until he retired about fifteen years later. I have no idea what would have happened to him if he had made his flight to NYC that morning.
#31
My mom had a 9am appointment at the social security office in the Murray Building in downtown OKC on April 19, 1995. My sister was supposed to take her but her little one was sick or something. My brother was working and was installing a whole new Heat and AC unit in a new build so he couldn’t take her.
We know that the bomb went off at 9:02am that day and 168 people died as a result. Over 500 were injured. I had a friend that was in a business meeting in a building close by and that building shifted, causing the closed doors to be stuck. Their car was in the parking lot and burned to a crisp from the blast.
My mom would have died that day, along with my sister and perhaps her little one if she had taken her along. It wasn’t their time to go. But I learned that we can go at any moment.
Today I was driving the pickup and a semi was coming towards me, in their own lane, I just had a feeling and pulled closer to the shoulder. They swerved a tiny bit to miss something in the road. If I’d have been on the far left side of the lane I as in they’d have sideswiped me. Perhaps causing me to lose control and spin out into a field of cows or into the ditch where I’d have flipped.
#32
A good friend of my brother’s set up a business in NY back in the late 90’s. It got off to a reasonable start and a couple of years later he decided to have a bit of a celebratory night out with visiting friends from Europe. It was a good night, apparently. So good that come Tuesday morning, no one was up for the planned visit of his brand new office. They just got some industrial strength coffee, shuffled to his balcony (it was, as the crow flies, for not a few hundred feet from his office window) and looked admiringly at his imposing tower block while nursing sore heads and frail stomachs.
They kept on looking as the first plane hit, and then the second. He doesn’t speak much about this.
#33
I climbed a tree
When I was supposed to be crossing the street and going home, 10 year old me was climbing trees.
Suddenly, the funniest thing I’ve ever seen happened. There was an ambulance going down the street (it was a hill-like road, going down), with a guy chasing after it.
If I hadn’t gotten distracted, it would have run me over
Thank you, ADHD
#34
I’d have been in hospital that evening!
Normally I take shuttle (mini traveler bus) services to my office in Gurgaon. On the way back home, am always the first person to board the shuttle.
So I always sit on the first left seat near to shuttle door. Couple of weeks back I decided to work from home, don’t know why because I very seldom opt for this option. But that morning I was having very weird feeling of not going to office.
So next day, when I go to my shuttle stop, my usual shuttle didn’t come. I had to on board different shuttle. The driver asked me didn’t you use Shuttl services yesterday? I was shocked how did he know?
Then he told me that my shuttle had major accident while coming back to home. And the girl (who sat in my seat that day) had major injuries along with several other passengers.
I guess I was lucky to not board the shuttle that day or anything could have happened.
#35
This kind of fits, my mom did an ‘oh by the way’ that literally saved my life. When I was 2 years old I got super sick, I had an outrageously high fever, I seemed to be in pain, my mom even sat in literal ICE baths with me it was so bad. No medication was working, so after 2 days we went to our doctor. Our doc couldn’t find a reason and said that it was likely a super bad flu and it’ll pass. Literally as we were walking out the door my mom said ‘oh by the way what is this brown bump on her bum?’ It was a bleb, which is a pus filled blister essentially,which developed because I had a pilonidal abscess. I was having spine surgery to remove the abscess 4 hours later. The surgeon said if I hadn’t been treated within 24 hours of that moment I would’ve died. Just a ‘’by the way’ saved my life
#36
It was 1989, my hair was short, my thoughts were long, and I dated a self-absorbed ego centric young man. I was in my 20’s. He was supposed to bring me to the airport to visit my sister in Oakland, CA, and then go to work. Well he passive aggressively primped and preened in the bathroom mirror so much that I missed my flight. I was supposed to be in Napa Valley wine tasting all afternoon with my sister and then driving back to my sister’s house along the picturesque, but narrow and steep on the outside, Pacific Coast Highway. Instead, I got in around 4 pm and we were relegated to watching, in her living room, the beginning of the World Series: A’s vs. Giants. At around 5 pm the Loma Prieta earthquake happened. Had we been out driving on that highway we could have been killed, or at least stranded. A section of the highway had given way and collapsed down the canyonside. Thank God for vain people. They do serve a purpose.
#37
Oh yes.
Around 4 years back, I was supposed to travel by bus from the city I use to study then (Pune) to my hometown (Nagpur) for a vacation.
My bus was scheduled to leave at 7 pm and I left from my hostel for the same at around 6, since it was just 35-40 minutes drive away. I had a friend who was going to drop me. On the way, for unknown reasons, the motorcycle stopped working. We tried to figure out but no, it didn’t start. So I decided to take an auto-rickshaw as I couldn’t afford to be late. On the way, we got stuck because of some political rally that had stopped all the traffic on the road. The auto-rickshaw driver suggested me to walk as it was not that far. By now it was 6:55 already. I carried my bagpack on my back and a couple of other bags occupied both my hands. My phone kept ringing but traffic and me panicking didn’t let my attention notice it. Somehow, cutting the mob, I reached the bus stop. It was 7:20. I enquired and the person at the counter pointed at the bus that had left and I was supposed to catch. I felt terrible. He told me that the driver kept calling me but I didn’t pick up. I felt even worse. Seeing me disheartened, he offered me a seat in the next bus at 10pm for free.
I reached home the next day to discover that one of the buses from Pune to Nagpur met an accident and it was burnt down to ashes. Yes, it was that same bus that I had missed. My parents were so paranoid. I was shocked too. But that’s how I had just ditched my death.
#38
not necesarily me, but my mom did. In September of 2001, my parents were on a week long trip in New York City for their wedding anniversary, I was about 7 years old, my brothers were 6 and 4. The night before they were planning how the next morning would go as they were scheduled to take the flight home the morning of 9/11. They had planned to go to breakfast in a restaurant inside the World Trade Center before they had to leave for the airport. Well, my mom overslept and my dad decided not to go to breakfast without her. Just as my dad had sat down to wait for her to wake up, he heard a bunch of sirens (which isn’t super uncommon for NYC) but when he turned on the TV he watched the second plane crash into the second building…
Yeah that was definitely my moms best mistake she’s ever done, and my brothers and I still shudder a bit when we think how different our lives could have been if they had breakfast as intended in the WTC the morning of September 11th.
#39
I’m a bit like a cat… I must have nine lives!! But more like it there’s some Divine intervention and some pretty knarly Angels protecting me !
Like the time when I was in my early twenties and checked my car warrant and realised it was expiring soon. Problem was it failed at everyplace I went to. Apparently the chasis where the engine sat was sooo rusty if I had an accident it would likely end up on my lap! i managed to find a really good deal to swap the car body , heavens knows if that was even legal ( I was pretty naive in those days!)
It was pretty stressful but I managed to get the revamped car in time to pick up my Mother and sister from the airport for my graduation the next day. As we were driving to my flat suddenly this car pulled out in front of me missing us my literally millimeters!!
Thing is i had made a mistake and realised I had been living in the wrong month, I had thought it was June but it was actually May. So really I hadn’t needed to get my warrant of fitness so early. And if I hadnt had made that silly mistake ….I would likely have ended up with an engine on my lap! And my family seriously injured, Wow!
which reminds me of another time…
I was at uni in the 90’s stuggling to complete an assignment in the computer room when suddenly the whole thing crashed and I lost everything. I was so dang frustrated I stormed out of the building and was about to carelessly cRoss the road when something made me suddenly stop . at that moment a car came barreling around the corner at speed And missed me by millimeters . I continued storming across the road straight after and got to the other side and suddenly went cold . It has taken a few seconds to register that if I hadn’t stopped heavens knows what would have happened! Nine lives I’m sure, there’s one problem though… I think I have already had eight near misses ….
#40
When my second son, Hunter was on his way, I was in labor…again. This time the contractions were getting harder and closer together, so we grabbed the diaper bag and car seat and ran to the car. As my husband got ready to start the car he realized he didn’t have his wallet. He went back in to get his wallet realizing he also forgot his keys (so we couldn’t even leave the driveway) so he had to wait for his mom to answer the door. As he got inside he realized he didn’t remember where he put his wallet. 10 minutes later as we got to the busiest intersection where we would have been 10 minutes earlier we ran across an overturned vehicle with a very dead man inside. I dialed 9–11 on my cell to report the accident. Had we not had to wait, that could’ve been us. When that realization hit, I couldn’t stop crying. What would Grammy and Josh do that night if we hadn’t come home? How would they be able to bury us? That night we drew up our wills when we got home and took out life insurance policies on ourselves with them as beneficiaries just in case. Scary night, but a great life lesson on so many levels. God knows our expiration dates, so it’s best to plan ahead for our loved ones and always be ready for something to slow us down when we’re rushing around. It also taught us to never take anything or anyone for granted.
#41
I was supposed to meet my friends in Istiklal street in Istanbul. I had to run to be on time, but instead, I thought it won’t be a big deal if I had breakfast and be a little bit late.
I tried to call my friends, but they didn’t answer. They should be angry because I wasn’t on time.
Few meters before arriving the street, a suicide bomber killed 5 people and 36 were wounded in our meeting point. People started running out of the street and police cars closed the road. I tried to pass to check my friends, but police men stopped me and I wasn’t allowed to pass. I was trying to explain that my friends are in there, but they didn’t understand English. Again tried to call them, but no answer!
I ran to their hotel and called their rooms but with no answer. Then I asked the receiptionist if he saw them, and said that they went out! I had nothing to do except going directly to the first room and knocked the door, and no response. I started shouting and knocked again and again, until my friend opened the door!
They overslept! they weren’t able to sleep the whole night because of the disco’s noise.
Finally, thanks God, we were all fine because none of us was there on time.
#42
Not so much a mistake as simply dumb luck. I used to drive tractor-trailers nationwide. One VERY cold winter night, I and another driver for the same company wound up staying in Breckenridge, MN. We initially went to this one motel to get rooms. They told us they were full and sent us to a neighboring motel about 500 feet away. They gave us rooms and we settled in for the night.
Sometime during the night, the first motel we were at blew up like a 1000 lb. bomb. Mind you, neither I nor the other driver heard anything. We both slept through it all. Granted, we both were completely exhausted. This happened back in the 1970s, so you can likely find out about it by searching the Internet. If I remember right, it might have occurred in 1975 or 1976.
When we heard what happened, we ran back to the other motel to see what happened. There was nothing, and I mean NOTHING left. Only the foundation. Three people died that night in the blast. How the others got out I’ll never know. What I DO know is that the other driver and I quite likely would’ve been on the casualty list.
There was a gas leak in the kitchen nobody noticed that was pegged as the cause.
That was one time I was lucky to be alive. I lost my brakes going down Mounteagle in TN on I-24 with 42,000 lbs. of hanging beef in my trailer, but that’s a story for another time.
#43
This happened to my sister and her family. They were driving home from visiting family and were a lot later than they meant to be. There was next to no traffic on the freeway. They decided to stop off at a Maccas close to home (just off the freeway) to get takeaway so the kids could go to bed as soon as they got home. They bought their takeaway and were taking the on ramp back onto the freeway and were just about enter ..when 1 of the kids dropped their burger. As the roads were so quiet and there was no one behind her, my sister stopped right at the entrance to the freeway. About 3 seconds later a car went speeding past the front of their car on the freeway doing approx 170klms (she saw in the paper the next day) being chased by a police car..If my sister had not stopped the car they would have been TBoned. At that speed her and her husband and her 3 children would have been very unlikely to survive
#44
One Such incident happened with me just today. I was off to my bank to deposit a cheque. While I was on my way, suddenly I realized that I had forgot the cheque in my office drawer. I stopped for a second and was just about to turn back when I realized that just few steps away an overgrown branch of a tree was cut down by few people and it felled exactly at the spot where I would have reached had I not forgotten the cheque. I was shocked for a few seconds and then thanked god for saving me.
#45
Two years ago, I broke my ankle quite badly while walking to the kitchen for a midnight snack. I was planning on a can of sweet corn smothered in butter. It was not to be, thank goodness. In the ER, it was found I had blood glucose of 793. If I hadn’t have broken my ankle, the can of corn would have done me in with that blood sugar already.
#46
Not me, but my Dad. During the Second World War, he was an air gunner in RAF bomber command. One night, he was having a beer in a pub near his airstrip, and he decided to have one more “for the road”. As a result, he just missed the bus back to his airstrip, so his crew took off without him on their assigned mission, but there was a malfunction and their bomber crashed into the side of a hill, killing everyone on board. He caught sh*t for it the next day from his superiors, and he felt bad for the guys on his crew, but he was also still alive, and as he said, he “didn’t feel too bad about that”.
Another time, he and two buddies were on leave in London, and after a night of carousing, they found a hotel to crash at. They had three rooms, three keys – two picked rooms down one hall (my Dad being one of those), and the other guy went down the other. Later that night, there was a German bombing raid, and the hotel took a hit. My Dad woke up covered in plaster dust and debris, but he was mostly unhurt, the same with his buddy in the room next to his. But their third friend had been killed, as that part of the hotel took the brunt of it. Not so much a mistake, but blind luck, as he could have just as easily picked that room.
#47
Yes, I was living in Chicago and I needed to go into Banner, the temp agency that I worked for. I was trying to get there between 8:30 and 9:00. However, I was running late that morning, and wound up getting there around 9:30–9:45. I ran into the building to find the elevators where shut down and police filled the corridor. They weren’t letting anyone upstairs. They told us all to leave.
I went back home and turned on the news. There was a shooter in the temp agency, with a semi-automatic weapon. I think it was the receptionist’s(?) ex-boyfriend. He had gotten there between 8:30–9:00 and opened fire. I don’t think he killed anyone, but he was holding the entire place hostage with the threat of killing everyone. After terrorizing everyone who was there, and shooting a few rounds, according to the papers, he grabbed the woman and dragged her to the lunch room, where he beat and raped her before surrendering to the cops.
It happened a long time ago, back in 1992. Around the time of the infamous Chicago flood, which crippled the city, but you couldn’t see any water above ground. So, I don’t know if it saved my life, since he didn’t kill anyone, (at least, that’s what the paper says, but I could have sworn he wounded some people at the time), but it would have been a very bad day to show up at the agency on time.
#48
Yes, I was on a Greek island in my early teens and my friend and I had hired scooters. Off we went doing many stupid things (as is the wont of naive teenagers) on the way. At the turn of a bend was a little but steepish hillock with a track up to the top where walkers had worn the grass down. Of course, it was the perfect opportunity to ride up and over on our little scooters. With a run-up from down the road, I ride up to the top with the scooter struggling all the way and finally stalling as I get to its pinnacle. With my friend laughing and whooping below I try to start the scooter again to ride down the other side. It wouldn’t start so I decided to roll down instead. It was only then I realised there was a massive drop to the sea or beach below, at least 100ft, at the bottom of the hillock and I would’ve ridden straight over it.
#49
Well my future wife, not me… in 1996 she was running a little late to Miami International Airport so she called the travel agent to change to a slightly later Delta flight. She had been booked on ValuJet 592 that crashed in the Everglades. Trouble is, she didn’t tell anybody about her itinerary change!
#50
This is not as exciting as some of the other answers, however, a muffin saved my life. I was sitting at a red light. I looked down and took a muffin out of the bag sitting on the passenger seat. I proceeded to eat it. I heard honking and loud screeching from brakes. A giant construction truck loaded with sand went flying through the intersection in front of me when I looked up. His light was red. My light was green and had I been paying attention I would have been in that intersection and he would have hit me on the driver’s side. I had to pull over to calm down after this happened. Thank you muffin for saving my life. I think about that every time I go through that intersection.
#51
Not me, but a friend.
He’d recently been applying for new jobs, and sadly not having much luck.
One accepted him for an interview, and he went along, tried his best.
He’s excellent at what he does, but for some reason, they turned him down!
Oh well, their loss.
A month later, the company burned down.
It would have been his second week on the job had he got it.
#52
I don’t know if this counts. I was involved in a MVA in early August 2017, I was rear ended. Within days I developed headaches, blurred vision, stiff neck, irritatability. I thought “Great, whiplash”. So my GP sent me off to have a CT Scans and Xrays. When my Dr got my results he told me that I didn’t have whiplash but had a cyst in my brain that would need surgery. He further explained that if I hadn’t had my accident he wouldn’t ordered the type of scans he did which meant the cyst wouldn’t have been found. He said I am quite lucky as the cyst is pressing on my brainstem which very serious.
So that motor vehicle accident has saved my life.
#53
Yes, because I was an alcoholic, and even when I wasn’t drunk the booze was scrambling my thinking. Like an idiot. I used to run my mouth and do stupid things. (Being an alcoholic was common at that company.)
Long story short: because of that I got fired from a company where I had worked 14 years. Of course when I got home I really wanted a drink. But I told myself that I wasn’t going to sit around, jobless, drinking and feeling sorry for myself. I quickly got a low paying job just so I could be working, and then go back to drinking. After that though I never felt the need to drink or get drunk, (and when I drank in the old days I always got drunk). Not that long after that I gave it up entirely. (Sober for this century). It was, only after I left that place, that I realized that the whole thing, working there, drinking, working there etc. was what was making me so depressed, angry, and stupid. I’m sure that if I had continued with that it would have killed me. Funny thing is that none of my drinking “Buddies” called me to see how I was doing.
#54
I got I’m trouble for not doing my chores. So while I was taking the yard as punishment, my dad was talking to me. I don’t know why but I ignored him, which I did later get in trouble for. That is when I noticed the snake. It was a copperhead, which has a (seldomly) fatal bite. So I turned the rake around, pinned it’s head down with the handle, and picked it up at the one safe spot to grab: where the head meets the body. My dad smacked it out my hand, threw it in the road, and decapitated it with a shovel. If I had payed attention to my dad, I would have been added to the list of those bitten by the most common venomous snake bite in North America.
#55
this happend in Herat, Afghanistan 2014
my family and i were going to the street markets to buy Eid clothes and in herat one specific street is for woman’s clothing with the most recent fashion. my dad thought we are going to some mall or something so he told the taxi driver some mall name, half way through my mother relised we are going the wrong direction and she told my dad that we are meant to go to that street market so then my father tells the driver and we turn, as we got near the market and about to get off the taxi a bomb blast happened.
#56
This reminds me, I once was late to church with my family and my mum who was visiting from Singapore, was nagging that we were late.
On the way there, there was a bad accident and a 3-lane road became a tight 1 lane road.
I’m glad that we were late because if we were punctual, we would have been involved in the accident as well.
P.S
Although my mum still nags, at least this one time is the 1st time when she stopped nagging during a car ride.
#57
This happened a couple of years ago. I was in my car waiting on a road traffic signal for it to turn green. The driver in the car which was in front of me decided to run the red light and did so. Even i thought of doing so and moved my car a couple of metres ahead but then stopped………..god knows why?
As I was waiting for the traffic light to turn green, a minibus coming from the opposite side lost its control and hit the same spot where I had been waiting a few seconds earlier.
Didnt know what that was…………devine intervention or good sence prevailing to not run the traffic light.
#58
I once left my indispensable laptop at home while heading for a training. Unfortunately I was robbed on my way and that was how I escaped losing my laptop and a whole lot of informations locked there in…
I am still grateful for that carelessness till today.
#59
When I was around 18, I needed to cut a tree in a very odd location. I didn’t know anything about cutting trees but that didn’t stop me. The tree was at the top of a bank that sloped steeply into the street. There was a wire fence between me a the tree. I put a ladder up and some shims under one side because the street sloped south and the bank I was climbing sloped east. The top of the ladder was against the tree pretty solid. I climbed up and was cutting in an upward slant above the fence. I thought the tree (about 18 inches in diameter) would fall away from me. I kept cutting and the tree didn’t fall. I cut clear through it and the whole tree slid down that slanted stump. As in the entire tree came straight down vertically. I fell off the side of the ladder as the saw went through. I dropped the saw and the tree landed right where I had been had I stayed on the ladder. I’ve told this to many people and they have told me things I should have done. I don’t think I can really explain how it was so people can understand but I survived without getting hurt. If I had stayed on the ladder I would have been smashed. The tree did fall away from me after it came straight down the bank. Pictures might help explain things but I don’t have any. That was over 40 years ago.
#60
Not me, but my mom. My mom was supposed to go into the Hamptons (this was before I was born), but she fell asleep and, when she woke up, it was raining really hard, so she decided to stay home. The weekend she was supposed to go was the same weekend, that the serial killer Son of Sam went on a shooting spree and killed a bunch of people. Had she gone, I could have very well never been born. Creepy when you think about it.
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