Sometimes, our gut feeling is the only thing standing between us and danger. Our brains are still wired with primal survival instincts that help us sense threats and act fast, even in modern life. To show how effective they can be, we compiled a list of stories people shared online about preventing or escaping scary situations. From close calls in dark alleys to confrontations in public toilets, these real-life accounts prove that when it matters most, humans are capable of more than we might realize.

#1

There was a dude sitting all alone at a bridge at night. I was high out of my mind, and just started talking to him, and we smoked some weed. Turns out he was contemplating s*****e, but I distracted him. That was like 4 years ago, I’m invited to his wedding next month. So yeah, high-me stopped a s*****e with an offer of weed.

Image credits: rangerRevolution

#2

I was in a club and saw a person put a pill into a girl’s drink while she was in the bathroom. I didn’t know what to do so I grabbed the glass and drank it. I told my friend “I just roofied myself” and woke up in my bed 20 hours later.

Edit: I was too drunk to think of any other solution at the time.

Image credits: Bk7

#3

I was in a bathroom at a bar once when this guy pulled a knife on someone else. I was really drunk taking a p**s at the urinal and turned to see what was happening. And p****d right at the guy with the knife. Like attack p**s. I didn’t do it on purpose. But he dropped the knife and ran out. So I was a hero in the eyes of my fellow drunk p*****s.

Image credits: CuntyMcGiggles

#4

Pretended I was dead. The circumstances were disgusting and definitely still get me into flashback mode sometimes, but I guarantee it saved my life.

EDIT: because it’s buried amongst comments somewhere in here. :

She, and you’re right, I won’t/can’t. But to be fair, I did say it and I suppose it’s rude not to elaborate some more. Every now and then it feels good to talk about how I feel about the whole thing, and I suppose it’s not so bad doing it anonymously…

I legally can’t give certain details (location, name of the group, etc) but when I was a teenager, for a few years I lived away from home due to some nasty circumstances. I thought the place I was living would be better than where I came from… classic example of teen brain being f*****g r******d/blind. Anyway, our main house – where I lived and worked most the time – got raided by some people who didn’t like us very much. We had never been attacked that way before and weren’t prepared anywhere near enough to be able to defend ourselves properly. I didn’t carry my piece on me when at home (though after this you can bet I did) so I didn’t have a way to attack back at them. My room was on the top floor, I heard things happening downstairs and when you’re in the position I was for as long as I was you can just tell what’s happening before hearing too much.. anyway, I knew I had to get downstairs (no exit from my floor, though if there was it probably wouldn’t have been safe to take it anyway) but that once I was down there it was going to be really bad. Underestimated that notion… by the time I was at the top of the stairwell I saw 2 friends on the ground. Obviously gone… don’t really want to explain how I knew. Didn’t hear anyone else in the room below so I went down to see if either of those two had had their guns out so I could use it to defend myself. They didn’t, but if they did it wouldn’t have mattered, someone was coming back in. Didn’t recognize the voice, no time to run back up the stairs, they would’ve hit me first, laid between my two friends and held my breath for longer than I thought humanly possible. Eyes open to look dead and to be able to use my peripheral to track what the shooter was doing, facing one of my friend’s faces. Luckily her eyes were closed.

Image credits: cocoanutter

#5

I have prevented at least 5 bar fights by saying “same team” to the two guys about to fight.

I hate that macho b******t and it is usually over some stupid drunken thing. So if they are close to fighting I’d look at them and say woah guys, same team. We are all here to get drunk and chase women.

Most of the time they could agree on that and it would ease the tension. Fights are just stupid, no one wins.

Image credits: dontbthatguy

#6

This isn’t really smart, but a guy tried to mug me so I punched him in the face and ran into the street.

He was really tall, pretty scary-looking, and I was a short and fat high school sophomore. I was walking home from school when he walked up and said “Gimme your phone.” I wasn’t actually holding a phone – it was a broken tape-recorder I was fixing for a friend. I immediately stuffed it in my pocket and told him no. He said, “Man, don’t make a scene. Gimme that or I’m gonna kick your a*s.”

He had really odd super light-colored eyes, and I remember how intense he looked. He started puffing up, doing the “gonna kick your a*s” dance, and he reached for his down jacket to take it off. Right when his hands were occupied with the coat, I punched him in the face as hard as I could (go childhood karate!) and ran into a busy street. Ducked around cars. Ran all the way home.

Probably not worth it for a broken tape recorder (like, with a tiny cassette tape), but I’m stubborn.

Image credits: FilliusTExplodio

#7

A few years ago, my friends and I had a water ballon fight on our street. Someone threw a balloon over the house and it hit a guy that was on the other side. A few minutes later, a guy in a suit that had water all over it came up to us and was furious. He comes up yelling and says stuff like “are you the m***********s who threw this g*****n water balloon that hit my suit! I have a meeting in an hour blah blah blah.” As he’s yelling, I’m thinking how we are going to get out of this. Then I get an idea. I butt in and say “THEY GOT YOU TOO!” The guy bought it and stopped and said something like “Yeah! You wanna find those m***********s blah blah blah, etc.”. We all say yeah and say that we’re going to get in our cars and drive around looking for them. Now the guy’s happy and he’s like “yeah I’ll do the same.” So we all got in our cars and drove off. Not really a dangerous situation, but I felt like a genius.

Image credits: brett96

#8

Back in my retail days, we would have a lot of repeat criminals at my store. Our managers usually knew who they were, but they didn’t want to do anything unless they had enough evidence to actually make it worth the polices’ while. Well, one guy came in who frequently stole things and then returned them for store credit. The security guy recognized him, and told my supervisor. She came over and pointed him out, and told me to distract him while she called the police from the upstairs phone.

Being all alone and on the spot, I started out very friendly and cooperating with his return. I tried to stretch it out as much as possible, making conversation and pressing buttons slowly, but that only ate up a few minutes. So, finally, I faked a computer problem. I told the guy that our store credit network was down, and that I would have to call our service center to get him his credit. Considering the company I worked for, stuff like this actually happened enough for it to be believable.

When he started looking impatient, I apologized profusely and asked him if he’d like a free snack while he was waiting. I saw his eyes light up at the offer of free, so I called over to the food court and told them to give him whatever he wanted. The guy happily munched on coffee and a pretzel until the police finally showed up.

Image credits: theultrayik

#9

Was really poor, in school, driving across country in an old *silver* sportscar to my mom’s place, blowing through tolls because I had zero cash. Get to the toll booth for Ohio at like 3am, thinking I’m gonna grab the ticket and keep driving. Instead the toll booth operator gets out of the booth, leaving the Stopping Arm down. He says “we’ve been having reports of someone in a grey sportscar not paying and skipping the tolls…” I freeze. Cold sweat, and then I stammer, “buh, buh, but my car is silver”. He looks at my car, hesitates for a few seconds, and says, “Oh. Sorry” then waves me through

Image credits: ButtersHound

#10

My dad was speeding on his motorcycle on some empty country roads around dusk. He noticed a cop with his lights on so he sped away. Took a left, got out of the cops line of sight, k**led the engine and walked his bike into a corn field.

Cop sped right past him.

He doesn’t ride anymore, but he still likes to tell this story.

Image credits: Vivi_for_Vendetta

#11

Once I was speeding down the road, not realizing how fast I was going, and passed a parked police car before I noticed him. The police car jumps out onto the highway. I looked at my speedometer and s**t…

Quickly, as the police car caught up to me I switched from the passing lane to the travel lane in front of a massive pickup. I maneuvered one more lane to the right and matched the police car’s speed relative to the pickup but backward perfectly hiding my small car behind the pickup.

I got off a random exit with a pickup still hiding me from the police car. By the time the police officer figured out what happened I was long gone. From an outside perspective it just looked like I innocently switched lanes and slowed down to get off the highway so I would have been fine even if the officer did manage to follow.

TL;DR: Escaped a ticket with a perfectly safe and innocent looking maneuver.

Image credits: Dubanx

#12

When I was in college, I was underage and in a bar when it was raided by the police. While the police were going through checking everyone’s id I walked away from the police towards the back of the bar. That’s when I saw that the bar staff had started to clean up the place. I saw one of the bartenders tie up a bag of garbage and set it on top of the bar to be picked up by the barback. I walked over, picked up the bag, threw it over my shoulder, calmly walked out the side door past a police officer and dumped the bag in a trash container. The officer just assumed I worked there, and never noticed that I walked on down the street after throwing out the garbage.

Image credits: craftedbarley

#13

I am not quite sure I did anything clever… but I did what I could. I used to deliver pizzas for papa johns. I had to transfer to a really s****y area due to other reasons I wont get into. But this was like m**h zombies walking down the streets kind of ghetto and dudes throwing up signs on corners. So I had a delivery to this apartment. Buzz 201. Old lady pops her head out and is like nope didnt order. Well s**t.. alright I decide to call. This girl says yeah ill be right down. Three black dudes walk from around the back and are like yeah you just called the girl she said shed be right down. I was like uhh.. ok. I make my way to the car and try to non challantly put the pizzas away and leave. But they meet me at the driver door and have money in hand so im like alright guess this is alright. I take out the three pizzas and hold them out with my left hand tell them its like $40, all the while my right hand is on my switch blade on my belt. They dont take the pizzas and theres an awkward silence. Next thing you know the dude on the left tries snatching the pizzas, but out of instinct I grab onto them with both hands, the blade now off my belt and in my hand still. One of the dudes clocks me in the back of the head with something heavy. Ouch. Slightly fuzzy I let go of the pizzas and flip the blade and slash as hard as I can. I made contact with someone somewhere but then my instincts kick in and I run. Faster than ever and pull out my phone and dial 911. One of them is yelling “give me your money or ill pop you!” I look back and theyre giving chase pointing a pistol at me. F**k. The operator answers and I just say the address and im being robbed at gunpoint like three times. I dive over a snow bank thats slightly taller than me. I look back over and they were gone. Cops come I give my statement. A week later the detective said they think they found the dudes because they did the same thing at another apartment. One of the dudes had a fresh gash wound on his arm. Combined with the fact the girl gave her real number to set up the robbery and it all fell back on her, causing her to give up names, they got 15 years in jail. They were all barely 18.

TL; DR: Got robbed delivering pizzas. Knife wound linked them to the crime.

Image credits: dongSOwrong68

#14

My brother was once at a party that got busted by the police. He literally did the “Hey what’s that over there?” thing to distract the cops and then jumped out a second story window. Wait what was the title of this thread again?

Image credits: PasteeyFan420LoL

#15

Years ago, I was working as a stagehand in San Francisco. I had a late gig tearing out a show from one of the theaters on the edge of the Tenderloin near Market Street; we all knew we’d be working well past midnight. Plus, it was Super Bowl Sunday and everyone knew the ‘Niners were going to win so instead of parking my car on the street in the Tenderloin, where it likely would get trashed by drunken football fans, I decided to pay for a secure garage 5-6 blocks away.

Fast-forward to 2:30AM. I’m leaving the venue and immediately realize what time it is; where I am; and through what sort of hard-core ‘hood I must walk through to get to my car. Oh. And I have about $1500 worth of hand & power tools with me. Niiice…

Not seeing taxi one, I have no choice but to dive in and hope that I’m smarter and faster than all the rest of the sharks in the water. Suddenly, an epiphany! The best way to survive this journey was to present myself as the meanest, craziest bada*s on a street filled with d***ged-up, crazy, violent mofos. So, I reached into one of my tool bags and pulled out my claw hammer. I began walking down the street, wildly swinging my claw hammer while yelling gibberish, cursing (I delivered an amazing Oscar-caliber Tourette’s performance!), ranting, raving, moaning and crying–all while making as much claw hammer contact as possible–in a kind, loving, Buddha-like, compassionate sorta way–with mailboxes, streetlight poles, telephone posts, parking meter posts and random walls. Almost immediately, I began noticing people crossing the street in front of me to get out of my way. I had turned the tables to where it was I who was to be feared. I made a mental note, that for survival purposes, to just be crazier and edgier than the next guy and people would get out of my way.

So, for a few brief, shining moments–when I absolutely needed to be–I was indeed the most dangerous, insane, baddest m**********r in the Tenderloin of San Francisco.

Image credits: skjellyfetti

#16

I got pulled over with 4 friends in the car at around 2 in the morning when I was 17. We had been tagging (spray paint) and had already been pulled over and let go 30 minutes before. The cops say we need to get in touch with out parents or we would be going to the station, which was d**n hard seeing as it was so late. Im about to p**s my self thinking I’m going to jail when one of the cops starts talking to me. While the others are trying to the phone I start my story. He asked me what’s been going on tonight, and I start telling him that my gf cheated on me that day with my best friend (true story but happened about 2 months prior). I say my friends just wanted to get my mind off it by going downtown and hanging out. The cop instantly sympathizes with me and ends up speeding up the process to let us go. All the while my friends are like statues trying not to laugh at my story. In the end we got off without anything. It was a good night.

Tl;dr: W***e of an ex got me out of going to jail.

Image credits: Sad_Little_Bastard

#17

Stopped at a downtown ATM about 2AM, I got out of the car alongside the road, and my friends circled the block to pick me up after I finished. It might have been imagined, but I got the feeling the four guys idling nearby were aiming to rob me, as they were positioned out of sight to anyone approaching the ATM, seemed to have no purpose for being there… and fit a profile or two.

I had the thought to continue past the ATM, but didn’t know where I’d go, or what I’d do… linger around the ATM I just approached and not use it? Wander away from where I was being picked up? I decided to use the ATM.

I fumbled with the buttons, as I was quite nervous, but managed to navigate through the heiroglyphic menu as my mind raced like never before. I tried my best to make out anything my potential attackers eere saying, but they were doing a good job of keeping theor volume down, which only made me more paranoid. “Don’t worry, you’re still fine, they wouldn’t attack until the cash is pulled out, right? It’s what they want! But what if I only withdraw $20? They’ll be unsatisfied… S**t, have they thought of that? They should attack me now so they can withdraw the max!” The unsettling thoughts continued to flow, as I began to visualize various versions of the violent events that loomed over me.

It was at this moment I noticed the little curved mirror that’s usually placed above an ATM. Huzzah! I just need to adjust my position ever so slightly and I’ll be able to see what’s going on. I’ll even bend my neck downward, so the mirror is out of view, that way they CAN’T notice! One elbow up. Arm raised, and down… pivot… and here we are!”

F**k.” It was part of a sentence, but that was the only word I could make out. Adrenalined rushed over me, and suddenly I could make out enough of their speech to know it was not English. Had I imagined the word f**k? No. Surely they saw my face appear in the mirror and realized I was onto them. That “f**k.” But I heard no shuffle of feet approaching, were they that silent? You have the mirror now, use it!

I shifted my focus upward… added some neck tilt… and there it was! The back of a head! And… six eyes… all staring intently. Yup. I was marked. I considered pulling out my phone for the tenth time, and then considered that it would likely just be more incentive for them… why did I have to get an iPhone? Why did I have to posess ANYTHING these thugs would want to hurt me to aquire?

And then I realized. I didn’t.

Check Balance. “F**k!” I offered them back the word I had borrowed. I slammed my fist on the button pad and mashed it around for good measure. “You’ve gotta be kidding me!” I stormed off all of ten feet to the curb to wait for my ride to pull back around, the apparent victim of low funds.

I really don’t know for sure if they were intending to rob me. The emotion and tempo of their converstion shifted significantly as I “reacted” to the ATM, which seemed to confirm the attention they were paying to me… but I did just slam my fist on the ATM…

We went to another machine, at a bank. I avoid “risky” ATMs now.

TLDR: Avoided ATM mugging by pretending account was empty.

Image credits: redtedredted

#18

Was walking late at night probably around 3 am from my friends place to mine about 4 miles away. Any ways this d**g a****t in a beat up civic drives up and jumps out of the car wielding a knife and screams at me to give him my money. Anyways we were a good distance from his car and it was still running so I ducked his knife when he got frustrated that I wasn’t responding and ran and jumped in his car. I promptly locked the doors and drove it to the police station. The car was in this guy’s name and so he got arrested in a couple hours when he was dumb enough to go home.

Image credits: one_imperial_fuckton

#19

I was walking back to my house in college, returning from the convenience store a mere half-block away. This kid (15 or 16 years old maybe) stopped us and goes “hey check this out,” pulled out two fixed-blade stiletto knives and said “gimme your f****n money.”

I yelled “BOY YOU BETTER PUT THAT S**T AWAY FOR THAT COP SEES YOU!”

I startled him enough that he looked over his shoulder to see if there was a cop. There was not. But when he looked over his shoulder my friend and I took off as fast as we could, back to our house. He didn’t follow us, and we got inside, locked the door, and called the cops (anonymously – cops are not welcome in my home).

Image credits: anon

#20

I was 17, second time I had ever been drunk, and oh how drunk I was, I was in the “I love everything and everybody”-state when three guys come up to me and one guy hits me straight in the face, I’m too drunk to feel pain, don’t realize what is going on. He starts asking for my wallet, I say I don’t have it on me, he hits me again, still no f*****g idea what is going on, he asks for it again, and I reply with: “Dude I love you, you are awesome” He says “You’re alright” and they walk off. It dawned on me that they tried to robb me when I sobered up.

Image credits: anon

#21

Me and a friend were in his truck, probably 16-17 years old. My friend had a lead foot, so naturally, we pass a cop going 90+ in a 50 mph zone. Cop starts chasing us. It was on this long stretch of highway that had many hills on it. My friend just guns it, and once we get over a hill, he made a quick turn into a church parking lot, pulled around the side of the church that couldn’t be seen from the road, and we watched the cop fly by us. We just jumped back on the road and headed in the opposite direction after that.

Image credits: Kareful-kay

#22

Last year when I got home from college, my house was robbed when I was the only one inside. I was asleep and heard a crash, and i knew my cell and house phones were downstairs, so calling cops wasn’t an option. I looked over our upstairs balcony and couldn’t see any weapon of any sort, and it was near pitch black, so I grabbed the massive floodlight my parents keep in their room, treaded silently down the stairs while the thief was in the kitchen, waited until he got about 20 ft away, then shone that beacon like it was the light of Jesus come to claim his soul. At the same time I gave my best maniacal Joker-esk laugh and told him his time had come. The robber was so scared he s**t his pants and passed out in my hallway. I called the cops and he’s currently serving a 20 year sentence for similar crimes.

tl;dr- Robber was in my house, I literally scared the s**t out of him.

Image credits: consin

#23

I was leaving a Target store in Chicago with about $200 worth of random things in a cart when a random guy walks up to me and says, “Take your cart and follow me to my car.” (with the intent to rob me). I really didn’t hear him the first time, and then I figured out what he was saying, so I just kept saying “What? What?” until we got closer to other people and he finally just gave up and walked away.

Image credits: anon

#24

When i was a teenager i would hang around this guy that sold a lot of d***s. We played ps2 and n64 a lot.

I wasn’t really in to the whole d**g scene so i stayed sober.

Well one day i was at his place and he had like ten other people there. I dunno exactly how many, but it was a lot.

So im chillin on his couch, playing mario kart. His couch was in his bedroom, which was at the back of the apartment. He has a balcony overlooking the “backyard” of the apartment complex.

I hear a loud BANG! followed by a bunch of yelling and stomping. “XXPD! XXPD! GET DOWN! DONT F*****G MOVE!”

Holy. F*****g. S**t.

I immediatly get up, quietly as possible open the balcony sliding door, step out, close it back and look around.

We’re on the 3rd floor.

I dont know s**t about sticking a landing or if i’ll survive this fall or if my legs will snap.

Then i see it.

One of the neighbors has a pool thats filled with water. If i take a running start, use his rickety a*s patio furniture to get air…i could totally make this jump.

My nerves are shot, adrenaline is pumping and any second that door is gonna bust open with cops.

So i do it.

I take a running start, steup off the little plastic chair, launch off and im heading right for it.

Did i forget to mention this was in the midwest in the middle of january?

The pool had a nice thick layer of ice.

I crashed through that, cut my arm all to hell and started freaking out. I thought i was in shock. I should have been in shock.

I broke the rest of the ice on the way to the side, climbed out and ran up the hill to the interstate and walked the 5 miles to my house.

I got pneumonia and almost died.

TL;DR jumped off a balcony to escape the cops

**I misread the title. This is not smart. This is dumb. This is the opposite of smart. My bad.**.

Image credits: Not_Gene_Parmesan

#25

Tl;dr – Managed to talk my way out of getting mugged in the 2003 blackout.

Like many NY’ers I was stranded because (at the time) I lived in Nassau county and naturally, the transportation options to get home didn’t really exist. I decided to walk from my office to a friends place in Brooklyn and made the mistake of going over the Williamsburg bridge. As I’m trundling my way through the blistering heat I take a breather at the corner of Lee Ave and Flushing. As I’m collecting myself a shady as f**k guy approaches me and asks if I can spare any money. As he’s walking up I catch, out of my peripheral vision, his very large (at least 6’5″) well muscled friend silently walking up behind me. Realizing I’ve got about 10 seconds before this goes south, I put on my heaviest Irish accent and explain that I forgot my wallet in the hast to leave the office and didn’t feel like walking back up 20 stories to get it blah blah and hey do you know where I could get a free drink blah blah. Dejected, they both walk away. Bonus – a livery cab came by less than a minute later and I was able to convince him to take me the rest of the way – because I had $200 in cash on me since I had coincidentally gone to the ATM in the morning before the blackout hit. Guys definitely saw me and were giving me the furious deadeye.

Felt good.

Image credits: DrinkinMcGee

#26

While on a family vacation, my brother and I decided to attend a college football game. On our way to the game the traffic was miserably backed up, and we decided to illegally park at a shopping center – despite signs all over that non-customers would be fined $350.

The game was a bit of a blowout and we decided to head back early and beat the rush (I was also paranoid that we’d been towed). Once we got back to the parking lot it was worse than we had thought. Tow trucks were all over the place, with three our four lined up in the lot – each taking turns towing obvious violations. The lot was quite empty since it was late at night, and fans would come back to their cars, get questioned by the cops, then towed if they were deemed to not be customers.

Thankfully, the car we drove was a rental from a nearby county so we blended in OK (a lot of cars were from Nebraska and had team paraphernalia all over). I also recognized that simply making a straight walk to our car would get us busted and towed. That’s when I made this now infamously genius suggestion. We would walk the long way around the parking lot, sneak onto the shopping mall sidewalk and enter into the Office Max we had parked in front of. From there, we would mingle for a few minutes, pick up some batteries and drinks and then walk out with our Office Max bags in visible view.

I don’t honestly remember the final 20 feet to our rental car, but I imagine it’s the feeling that Andy Dufrane had when he emerged from the sewage pipe in the Shawshank Redemption.

Image credits: Pianodude89

#27

When I was a teenager I walked across the border (Canada to US) with no passport and without going through customs. The town on the other side of the border was really small and only had a Subway restaurant.

Years later, I decided to walk across again, this time legitimately. I told CBP that I had never been across before. When they asked me what I was planning to do in the US, I said, “I dunno, eat some Subway.”

The CBP guy got really suspicious and asked me how I knew that there was a Subway there. I freaked out. I was sure that they caught me on my lie. Then, in a split second, I decided to pretended to have misheard the question, and I just said, “well, I guess I can go to McDonald’s instead.”

He let me through.

Image credits: stevebrowntwon

#28

When I was a freshman in college, I was at a house party where the majority of the guests were under-age. I was chatting it up with a girl who was older (she was 20, I was 19) when we start to see people rushing by us to get to the back door. As it turns out, the cops were busting the party and handing out drinking tickets. I grabbed her arm and threw us into the coat closet, then I sat up against it so that no one else could enter (it seemed like it was locked with a bolt from the outside). I sat there and made out with this girl while the cops searched the building, but when they came to the door, we hid under some coats that were there. Managed to escape without a hitch, and asked if we could go back to her place. When she said that she had roommates and insisted we go back to mine, I had to come clean that I was a freshman living in the dorms. Did not get lucky that night.

Image credits: anon

#29

It wasn’t really smart, just hilarious. I was walking along the bike path by my house a couple months ago in broad daylight and these kids stopped me and asked for a cigarette. I said I had no more because they looked like 16. One said “I bet you do, and you can empty your pockets too. We’ll take your cellphone.” I just looked at them and said “excuse me, kid?” The other one reaches in his pocket and I’m thinking oh f**k, this kid is about to pull out a switchblade.

Instead he pulls out a small swiss army knife. I couldn’t help myself and started laughing hysterically. Seriously, even if he managed to stab me with that thing, all it was going to do was p**s me off unless he got VERY lucky with where he got me. They started to get angry that I wasn’t scared and the one says “I said give me your f*****g phone, b***h.” I very calmly said, still trying to regain my composure, “Listen kids, this is not a day where I’m prepared to deal with this b******t. I’m tired. If you take my phone, I’m not calling the cops. The first thing I do is go home and call every one of my friends, who are a lot scarier than I am. Then they call all their scarier friends, and within an hour they’re all up here looking for you. They will find you, and if they come all the way up here, they are not going to be as understanding as I am and just take the phone back. They’ll beat your a*ses into the dirt. I’m going to keep walking now, with my phone. You’re going to go home. And if you have any common sense you’ll never try this again, because anyone else you try this on in this area will beat the s**t out of you.” The look on their faces as I turned and walked away was priceless, they looked so dejected. You could tell they were devastated that baby’s first jump was a flop. I still walk that bike path, but I haven’t seen them since.

I also broke a homeless guys nose once when he grabbed me to presumably r**e me walking through a park at night once, so there’s that.

Image credits: BitchMagnets

#30

Not me but I had 2 friends who almost got caught smoking weed by the cops in high school. We’ll call then Dave and Scott. So Dave and Scott both decide late at night they’re going to take Dave’s car and smoke in a walmart parking lot. So they go lay the seats down in the car and smoke a few grams in the parking lot, not noticing the cop car roll in. So when they’re done they put the seats up and are pulling out of the parking lot when they see the cop cars lights. So they pull over and the cops do their whole routine and eventually ask Scott to get out of the car so they can talk to him. After a few minutes he comes back looking scared s**tless, the cop then asks Dave to step out of the car to talk. So he does and the cop asks what they were doing in the car. So Dave while in his blazed stupor goes “sir I really hope you understand but me and my friend have a very secret relationship” the cop immediately understands and lets both of them leave.

TL;DR Friends escape cops by pretending to be into butt stuff.

Image credits: whitedraco

#31

In college, my roommate and I made a few potato guns. Potato guns are PVC style cannons wich use hairspray and a lighter from a grill to shoot potato pieces at an impressive speed. Mine was small, maybe 12 inches long, and could fit in one hand. Anyway after a few days of having fun, we notice our roommate has a small hydrolysis machine for a class project. A hydrolysis separates oxygen and hydrogen out of water, creating a very explosive gas (this is what hydrogen cars will run on). I get a clever idea of putting this into my hand held potato gun, rather than the typical hairspray.

Since the machine has to be plugged in, we do load it up inside, and fire it in the hallway. It is a massive success, and splatters a potato on the wall ~50 yards away. Naturally the huge bang alerts a few RAs. This is where I had a great idea. I kept my bike in my room (because it was on the nicer side), and I ran over to it and deflated the tire, while ditching my potato gun under my bed. The RA comes running into the room demanding to know what the noise was from. I point to my, now flat, bike tire, and say that it popped.

#32

My friends and I lived in a sketchy neighbourhood during our university years, and we were a real mixed bag of characters that didn’t really blend with the general population of that area. My friend was, and still is, a tall, curly haired embodiment of posh. A proper private school boy. He was stopped by a group of three teenage lads threatening him if he didn’t hand over his wallet and phone. He freezes, then grabs his jacket lapel and speaks into a ‘radio’ saying something along the lines of, ‘This is Officer Thompson, I’ve been approached by three youths and need assistance.’

They scarpered pretty quick. That situation could have been a lot worse if they’d been paying attention and realised he was just talking into his coat.

#33

So I was over at a friends apartment loft jamming on guitar for a few hours. It was after midnight, and time to leave, I had parked about a block down the road from his door. I also was carrying my guitar in case in one hand and one of his guitars in case, in my other (I was taking it home to do some work on it for him). About halfway to my car this s*****g pulls a large knife on me and tells me to drop the guitars. I do as asked and back up, as the thief reaches down to grab the guitars, still holding the knife, I draw my .45 1911 compact, as he breaks eye contact with me and begins to turn away to leave, I yell “HEY!” He turns back and I say “look you can keep the guitars if you think you can outrun the bullets” he drops both cases, and his knife then takes off down the street. Just at that moment a police car rolls up on me and the cop sees me pointing a pistol at a guy running away, screeches to a stop and pulls his gun and orders me down. Took a few minutes to explain I wasn’t the bad guy, too late as the bad guy already got away. I was lucky I wasn’t shot by the cop, all was good after he cleared me, and saw my CCW. D**n scariest night of my life, I always thought if I ever pulled my gun I would shoot, glad I didn’t though. Have never pulled it since. Whew, too close for comfort.

TLDR: got robbed/pulled gun on robber/almost got shot by cops.

#34

My brother and his friends used to climb the tree in front of our house and throw water balloons at passing cars and/or pedestrians. One day, they hit the WRONG F*****G CAR. Huge guy gets out and starts screaming obscenities, eventually trying to climb the tree to get to them. I hear what’s going on and go out to investigate. The guy is seriously pissed and wants to call the police. I said, “I have a better idea…” and got the hose. He spent twenty minutes happily spraying them all down until they finally came down and apologized.

#35

My brother got pulled over speeding on an interstate in his IROC camaro (its a really sweet ride) when he was 19. He recalls something like 30 mph over the limit. The officer comes up to the car and says “Sonny Ive been waiting for you all night.” My brother replies “I tried to get here as fast as I could!” The cop was in stitches and let him go.

#36

My mom is a lawyer in downtown Los Angeles and sometimes I’ll skip school and hang out in LA for the day. Because I’ve grown up in LA I’ve dealt with being followed, but this time some guy was following me with id say about a foot of
Space between us. He kept trying to whisper things in my ear. In the past turning to face and address people like this usually worked. I turned around and said “can I help you sir?” To which he started mumbling and walking faster towards me. At this point I’m pretty concerned because I’m a 16 year old girl by herself. I decide to walk into the public library and typed out on my phone “this man is following me, please help” and asked the librarian if they had this specific book and showed her the message. She nodded and turned to the guy and asked him what book he would like, to which he responds “something on the antichrist”.Yuck. I filed an arrest and my mom still does not know to this day haha.

#37

Back in high school, my buddies and I would do dumb J*****s/CKY s**t to entertain ourselves. We were a******s.

So one night, 3 of us are driving around in my car, bored out of our s**t. It’s the night before trash pickup and the streets are lined with bins, so naturally I just start plowing the trash cans with my s****y 92 Honda Accord. On our 3rd or 4th one, headlights go on in the driveway right after we plow the bin. Ok s**t. My first reaction is keep driving normally and see what happens. Well, soon enough, this guy in a big black SUV is on my a*s. **An actual f*****g car chase ensues.** Total adrenaline mode. My car wasn’t fast by any measure but it could outhandle his SUV and we’re driving through the suburbs. So I’m just careening through curves and making unexpected turns onto other roads and eventually we lose this guy. We make our way back out on to the main road and start heading home.

Ok, so here’s my clever moment, not brilliant or anything, but definitely counter-intuitive and I’m impressed with myself for thinking of it in the heat of the moment. Also there are two fun kickers, so stick with it. So we’re cruising on the main road, thinking we’re home free and guess who I see ahead pulling out of the neighborhood? S**t, he definitely sees us. He’s holding something out the window and yelling at us. Instead of driving straight past him, which would allow him to pull out right behind me no problem, I gas it and cut left **hard**, toward him, and turn in past him. Basically, he now has to pull a full u-turn to give chase. This ultimately allowed us to get away pretty easily.

Here’s kicker 1: As I made the turn and we drove by the guy, mere feet away from, I got a good look at what he was holding out the window – a badge. Fantastic, I’m running away from the police.

Kicker 2: Next day at school, our friend who worked at a pizza joint comes up to us and says he has a story to tell us. Of course we do too, and we know we’re going to top him, so we tell him to go first. He tells us how his store was robbed last night, cops came and everything. Yadda yadda. Some detective shows up, apologizing for taking so long because he just had to chase some kids around his neighborhood.

#38

Our house was once burgled in the middle of the night whilst we were asleep upstairs. I heard noise coming from the kitchen, got out of bed and walked to the top of the stairs only to see a man in a ski-mask using a torch to look around our living room. I crept back to my room and called the police.

It’s unconventional, but the smartest thing I’ve ever done is staying quiet to avoid confrontation. I’d rather lose my possessions and keep myself and my family safe.

#39

When I was a kid I sprayed a bully in the face with a super soaker, point blank. I ran because he was fat. He couldn’t catch me.

#40

I was driving on the freeway when traffic slowed down to a crawl. I look in my rear view mirror and saw a car barreling down the road behind me, not slowing down at all. I just had time to quickly switch one lane over. The car eventually slammed on their breaks, did a 180, and their rear end slammed into the rear of the car that was in front of me. If I hadn’t have moved my car likely would have been totaled and who knows what injuries I would have sustained.

#41

Had a cop car chasing me down as I ran down the street with an 18 rack of beer at the fun age of 16. Ran up a driveway to our local historical society, dropped the beer in a bush as I ran by it, and dived behind a tree. The car came creeping up with the floodlights on and searching all over since there were plenty of bushes and more than a few trees. As he pans over my hiding place I move opposite of the car in a low crawl and he never spots me. He drivers off after 5 minutes of panning his lights around and getting out to yell a warning at me.

Grabbed my beer, ran down the trail way towards the park my friends and I planned to meet at in case cops busted our original meet up, which clearly they had, and had to sneak around a parked cop who was sitting at the opposite entrance to the trail way I was on.

TL;DR Cop chased me only to be out done, snuck around another cop, many beers were had to ruin all that exercise.

#42

More like preventing a potentially dangerous situation…

Was hitchhiking and thinking of a way to make the situation safer while getting a ride. So, whenever a car pulled over, I’d take a picture of the person’s license plate with my phone and send it to my dad with the message “if you don’t hear from me in X amount of time, report the license plate” along with a description of the driver. I’d tell the driver this, as well.

Don’t know if it saved my a*s or not but so far I’ve never had a bad ride.

#43

On multiple occasions I have faked death or gone into horrible seizures to escape being beaten. One time, my uncle was beating the c**p out of me so I pretended to be dead. He freaked out and ran out of the house. Just a few months ago my brother told me he was watching the whole thing from the window. He thought my uncle k**led me and started to cry, and then he saw me jump up, look around, and then jump out the back window. He said it was the funniest thing he ever saw in his life. I didn’t know he was watching me, and I just wanted to get the hell out of dodge. But now, re-seeing it from his point of view, its pretty hilarious.

#44

Me and some buddies were walking home from the bar one night. My one buddy is really nice but likes to argue with people after having too much to drink. A couple guys just sitting on the side of the road say something to said buddy and he starts talking s**t, as do the other guys. I see this is only going to escalate, I noticed one of the guys is eating a burger. So as fisticuffs are about to be thrown, I jump into the middle of the fray and say in a very intimidating and loud voice “THAT LOOKS LIKE A DELICIOUS F*****G BURGER, WHERE DID YOU GET IT!!!!????” The guy was so shocked that he just kind of mumbled “Mcdonalds” and just sauntered away with his other buddies.

If you’re ever in a situation where you feel a fight is imminent just yell something weird to catch the people off guard, instant de-escalation, and it was f*****g hilarious to see the look on the guys face.

#45

I was really into this girl. We were hanging out a lot, listening to music together, going out to dinner, etc, but we weren’t having s*x or anything. It turns out that one of my friends also had a thing for her, and was hanging out with her unbeknownst to me around the same time. A couple of days went by and I hadn’t heard from my friend or said girl, and it was because he was spending the night at her place and they had started having s*x.

A couple of weeks later, he let me know that said girl in whom we were both interested had herpes, and he had contracted it from her.

Bullet: Dodged.

#46

When I was in Iraq for a nasty 16month deployment where I did a lot of communications work. I did things like radio guy, setting up networks in far off places, setting up halo tourneys for the guys. Well, being a radio guy sometimes requires me to go on missions with my unit to make sure coms are always up. I’ve done more than I can remember. The one mission that stands out in my mind is the one where one of my friends died. Kind of hard writing this even though it’s been about 3 years since it happened, but still f***s with my head.

We had a mission to go in to these palm groves near the Iranian border near Bah’qu’bah, in the Diyala province. It was a nasty looking mission where we had to clear out a known strong hold of what we called AQI (Al’Queda of Iraq). It was a joint operation with the Iraqi police and Iraq Army. Their job was to clear all the traps along the way. We had a f****d up a*****e Colonel who wanted all the glory, and had the units spear head it. It took 2 hours just to get 500 feet. When we actually started getting into the palm groves, I was with some of the support guys, and our massive problem was people falling over from dehydration. It was hot and extremely humid. Well, I’d help out getting the guys out and running back and forth from the command location to where people were passing out. The group my friend was in was near the front, and I just grabbed one of the guys that fell out from dehydration. On my way back I heard a boom. For about a minute there was gun fire and it stopped. Screams for medic ran through the palm groves. My friend tripped a booby trap. A trip wire IED. I was not 20 feet away from where it was. My friend got his lower half of his body destroyed. The only thing that save everyone else was the trees. A few guys got some scraps of metal in them, but were uninjured for the most part. This one big sergeant first class that I didn’t really like hauled him back to the evac site. I liked him after that. My friend died on the way back. Turns out there was several trip wires along the way, and I just missed them by luck alone. If they would have kept moving when I was there with them, good chance I would have been hit. I escaped that. But my mind surely didn’t.

edit: Thanks for all the support guys. Writing this was actually really hard for me. This is the first time I’ve really told it so specifically, even if I am leaving some things out. I’d do a full write up, like a book or something, but I never have the time and I feel that it would never get published. Others have done it better. Check out https://ift.tt/H0ws6Bp

That guy did it better than anyone I’ve seen.

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