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[Lord Dullard]

Oh, time slow-down. I get that.

I'm from Michigan. The first time I ever drove on the freeway during winter, I completely underestimated the severity of the road's condition. There wasn't much snow that day, but the ground was completely coated in a rain/slush mixture. I'd been driving around on snow for a while so I assumed the behavior of the slush would be pretty much the same as snow, when in reality it acts somewhat like a mix between ice and snow.

Anyhow, it had just started to actually snow, and I began moving into the fast lane to pass a very slow-moving car in front of me. Visibility was really bad, and at just that moment somebody came whipping up behind me in the fast lane at probably 100+ MPH. I instinctively jerked back in to the slow lane to avoid colliding with them, which started me fishtailing - keep in mind I was going somewhere around 70mph at this instant. I was pretty inexperienced and I over-corrected. This caused pretty much the worst possible thing to happen: the car began doing full 360 degree circles on the middle of the freeway.

Time really did seem to slow down. I'm not sure exactly how long I was actually spinning - I suspect it was probably under ten seconds - but it seemed to last about a minute. I remember all the CDs in my CD holders strapped to the visors flying out and whipping around the car like little mini-Xena-warrior-princess-discs. I know I spun around at least three times, because I got a good look at the same sign three different times.

Eventually my trajectory veered off of the freeway. Thank goodness for that sludge, I sledded down the slope sideways without overturning and continued to sled sideways (which caused me to finally slow down) all the way up to the edge of the woods. I stopped maybe a half a foot in front of a pine, with some of the lower branches snapping off against my door's mirror. I think I sat there for a good ten minutes without really doing much other than going holycrapholycrapholycrap.

[DrPoo]

Its kinda funny how the brain can slow down its time perception, i have experienced time slowdown before, just not in car accidents, more like when jumping from springboards, and in my dreams. Actually had a dream that felt like a whole week, once. That was awesome.

[Tellemurius]

Well cousin convinced me to roll off a crappy offroad ramp behind a school. Let my brother go first and he just flew off the bike. I go and did a forward flip and blackout for 20 seconds. woke up feeling basically drunk and... stumbled back home eyes are half open, felt like a hour for a 5 minute walk. Went upstairs and puked out empty contents. took a couple of advils and went to sleep. took a couple of hours before i got up. my head is furiously in pain now. started rambling memories for any signs of amnesia. in the end lost possibly a year of childhood. Serious concussion.

[Reudh]

Yeah, like I said, the time slowdown effect is experiential thought; massive amounts of cortisol and adrenaline are pumped into your body which kick everything up into hyperdrive.

People under experiential thought make decisions roughly as sensible as that of a severely drunk person, but their strength increases as well as reaction time. There are cases where people lift cars off their family- the average person's lifting capacity temporarily increases to 400-500kg for a few seconds during experiential thought.

It's why I used to be such a good fighter at karate; I'd go fight or flight every time we did sparring. And man, some of the students there were really good. I was (gonna sound conceited here) unparalleled at blocking, and when I went fight or flight they looked like their punches came through syrup in terms of speed.

[Scelly9]

I was bouncing on a trampoline (The kind with mesh sides) and the wind picked up. The entire trampoline lifted off the ground and flipped through the air. I was thrown through the air and landed on hard packed dirt, about three inches away from where a pole landed, skewering the ground.

[Reudh]

During a gale-force storm (Melbourne's famous for these!) the roof blew off my neighbour's shed. Corrugated iron flying about the backyard would be very dangerous if it crashed into a window.

I decided (perhaps foolishly) that I should retrieve these sheets and weigh them down with bricks to prevent damage to the house or neighbour's houses or neighbours.

While I was struggling to pull these sheets of iron (one false move and I would've been severely injured), one of the other sheets of iron lifted up in the air and blew toward me. I had so little time to react, all I could do was lift up the sheet I was carrying, to block the other one. Thankfully the sheet slid over the other sheet while i was hiding beneath it, rather than hitting me in the stomach if I had been less aware.

I'm glad I was so alert, because if I hadn't been, I probably would've stood a good chance of being eviscerated that day.

[Reudh]

It wasn't blatantly stupid. I chose to do it out of... misguided altruism?
That fits.

Plus the only other near death experience was a sheer accident.

[Shakerag]

No near death experiences, but I can chime in about the sleep paralysis thing.  It's part of the standard kit with narcolepsy.  First time or two it happened I thought I was going to die (along with thoughts of something external is paralyzing me), but now it's happened often enough to just get to the "oh, this again.  please hurry and wear off already" stage.  Also, it is pretty god damned odd to feel your body breathing and *not* be able to take over manually.

[kaenneth]

one moment while I do something so blatantly stupid I shall nearly die so I can post something relevant in this thread.

...and he was never heard from again.

[DrPoo]

one moment while I do something so blatantly stupid I shall nearly die so I can post something relevant in this thread.

...and he was never heard from again.

...and the curse continues, and neither he was heard of again

[DrPoo]

one moment while I do something so blatantly stupid I shall nearly die so I can post something relevant in this thread.

...and he was never heard from again.

...and the curse continues, and neither he was heard of again

THIS ID GREATORDER! YOU HAVE BEEN CURSED AND SHALL DIE! *mutates into dark god* oh shit, my disguise fell off.

RUN EVERYBODY! RUN! RUN AWAY FROM AZAGTHOTH!

[Loud Whispers]

And they were never heard from again.

[SalmonGod]

I've missed out on all this stuff.

I have the most screwed up sleep habits, which you'd think would trigger screwed up sleep experiences, but it doesn't.  I've never had a lucid dream or sleep paralysis.  I've had 4 nightmares in my entire life and very rarely remember my dreams at all.  I close my eyes and several hours later I open them.  There's nothing in between.  I usually wake with some incredibly vague emotional residue that fades within 30 seconds as the only sign that there was probably something there.

I'm not a panic type of person.  I've had plenty of occassions that would have caused most people to panick or enter that time-slow state.  What I get is a feeling like an explosion of warmth in my chest, but otherwise no alteration that I can tell to my state of consciousness or cognitive processes.  The one exception was my motorcycle accident.  I was hit with the sudden realization that I was taking the turn too wide (at about 40 mph).  I immediately straightened up and slammed my brakes.  There was no conscious thought involved in that decision, but I can still tell you that I did it because I instinctively knew it would be better to crash into the muddy ditch than to try and adjust my angle and possibly go down on the road.  As soon as I slammed the brakes I found myself sliding on my face through the ditch over a hundred yards away.  Somehow I was standing on the set of my bike, which was completely mangled, and its momentum was pushing me along.  There's a lapse in time somewhere in there where there was no slow-down or anything.  Those couple seconds were just completely skipped over.  I have no memory of them, not even of blacking out or anything.  I was also completely unharmed.

[Loud Whispers]

I have the most screwed up sleep habits, which you'd think would trigger screwed up sleep experiences, but it doesn't.  I've never had a lucid dream or sleep paralysis.  I've had 4 nightmares in my entire life and very rarely remember my dreams at all.  I close my eyes and several hours later I open them.  There's nothing in between.  I usually wake with some incredibly vague emotional residue that fades within 30 seconds as the only sign that there was probably something there.

If quasi-acceptable sleep habits were instant tickets to odd dreams, there'd be a lot more people going on about them
As for the dream thing, you're probably just forgetting them all. Or you've lost out on A LOT of sleep.

As for the motorcycle thing... Motorcycles.