🤯 INCRÍVEL: 41 Survival Tips That People Say Actually Saved Their Lives 😲
To preface, I was 21, weighed all of 95 lbs and looked like I lived to party.
I was at a bbq of a wealthy family member of my friend in San Francisco. I knew nobody except my friend.
The host let his dogs have the rib bones. One of them started gagging in distress. While everyone sat staring at the choking animal I jumped up, grabbed the dog, shoved my arm down its throat and retrieved the bone. I threw it onto the patio and looked at the host with fire. “Do not give your dog bones!” I screamed.
Not a single person responded, not even a thank you, but I saved a dogs life that day. Yeah me.
“STOP THE CAR, IM GOING TO VOMIT”
I used this twice. Once with a friend who was driving super SUPER high and I had no clue (she actually crashed her car 2 days later) and once with a guy who wasn’t taking no for an answer. He stopped and I booked it.
If you’re freaked and need to get out of a car, and if the person is not listening and stopping, say you’re going to be sick.
Drowning. I saved my son from drowning in a pool. He had swallowed so much water that he couldn’t breathe. I put him on his back, rolled him to his side and hit him on the back. He ended up throwing up numerous times. His first words to me were, Thanks for saving me Dad. I still get choked up, 15 years later.
A bar in the bottom of a sliding glass door track to prevent it from opening.
When I split from my ex, I moved with an infant into a ground floor apartment with a sliding glass door. My dad asked my brother in law to cut a piece of wood to put into the bottom of the interior door track to prevent it from opening. Sure enough when he showed up to k**l me, that piece of wood saved my life. It kept him out and bought me time.
Also, plenty of people heard him taking a crow bar to my front door and no one else called for help. My neighbor saw him and recognized him but didn’t want to get in the business. When someone is trying to k**l me, please get in my business. I am much older and wiser now and I will error on the side of my safety and yours.
“Everybody in, nobody out!” River safety is no joke.
My friend’s dog jumped into a river and started to get swept away due to the increased current from flooding. My friend jumped into the river to rescue her dog. I started to jump in after her, heard this safety phrase in the back of my head, grabbed a branch and swung myself back onto land (there was a decent drop into the river). I ended up having to run down the shoreline a bit to catch up to them, and then hoisted both my friend and her dog out of the water. None of us would have been able to make it out had I have also jumped in.
Woke up around 1am and went to use the bathroom. Started sweating profusely from what felt like every pore in my body. Then started feeling like I had to throw up. Individually, they were concerning. Together, they were not good.
Woke my wife up and said “I need to go to the ER…like right now”. Got there, told them what was going on and sent straight into a room. Wife was let in a few minutes later and we were told I was in the midst of a heart attack.
Asked my cardiologist a few days later what would’ve happened if I had just tried to sleep it off and see how I felt in the morning. He said “you wouldn’t have woke up”.
Don’t ignore the signs, folks. .
“Always let someone know where you’re going.”
Many hikers, travelers, or solo drivers were rescued because someone knew their route and raised the alarm when they didn’t return.
I rehabbed aggressive dogs and learned how to act in a dog attack situation.
If its one dog, stay still. Don’t run, don’t fight. Put your hands up so it doesn’t grab your arms or nip your fingers, and don’t give it any stimulus.
If you run, its a game. If you fight, it’s a fight. Either way you’re going to lose.
Be prepared to fight if you have to, because running you’ll die tired. Hit it hard, hit it fast, and get ready to have a really bad day.
Then the day came, I was getting out of my car and my neighbor’s untrained pitbull that he was walking without a leash decided to charge me.
I did all the things, and as he got up to me he was confused because nothing was happening. It stopped and tried to goad me into doing something, leading to him trying to nip my leg.
So I took the bag of Arizona Ice Tea cans I had just bought and swung like that s**t downwards like a medieval flail. C*****d it right between the eyes and on top of the nose and backed it off. I’m not sure it even knew what just happened.
And THEN the owner showed up, so who knows what would have happened?
When traveling, leave all your real jewelry at home. Get cheap costume fake jewelry to wear. Fake Rolex, fake rings, etc. When you get mugged, they think they made a good score, and run off. They’ll find out later that instead of $5000 worth of diamonds, they got $5 worth of garbage. This paid off when we were robbed in Jamaica. .
“Truck water and food”
Always carry sealed drinking water in the vehicle.
Keep some no-heat-ready-to-eat food stuff in your vehicle.
I got stranded in cornfield Iowa during a snowstorm and had to wait it out for four days until I get get dug out.
Lost myself in Idaho and got my rig STUCK really good way out in the back country for a week.
Beef Jerky and a five gallon jug of potable water got me through.
I once saw a post on Reddit about someone who had a weird red line going up their arm. Everyone told them to go to the ER, that it was an infection leading up to their heart. A couple of years later, my husband cut his elbow. Two days later, he started with a fever and when I looked at his arm, I saw the line and made him go right away (we were on vacation and he wanted to wait until we got home). 3 days in the hospital and a surgery later he was ok, but the nurse told us he could’ve lost his arm or died if he brushed it off like he tried to. So thank you to that reddit poster!
Self-heimlich. I choked on food while driving in a busy street, didn’t breathe for over a minute because it was standstill traffic and I was in the middle lane. Ended up cutting people off at the slightest sight of room, put my car in the ditch and 8th grade home ec came to mind as I heimliched myself on the spoiler of my car. C*****d a rip, spit the food out and cried for 10 mins because my vision started to go black. .
Not quite life saving, but it sure felt like it at the time:
I didn’t realize I had heat exhaustion and got on a roller coaster. When my vision started going gray at the edges I remembered the Mythbusters Blue Angels episode where they talk about the full-body-muscle-clench thing they have pilots do to counteract the G forces pulling blood away from your brain. I did those clenches for the rest of the ride and managed to avoid passing out, got off the ride and toddled off to a sheltered area to drink some water and cool off.
Lessons about my heat tolerance were learned that day, but the pre-existing lesson about Hook Maneuvers meant I got to learn them while conscious and in private instead of from an impatient EMT after they revived me.
If you’re under water, struggling and disoriented, blow bubbles to know which way to swim.
I inhaled water coming out of a big water slide that dropped me from height into water. The water from the slide pouring down directly on me was creating a current, I was stuck and don’t know which way was up. I’m a fairly strong swimmer but panicked. I blew some bubbles and was able to work out which way to swim, just about dragged myself out of the pool on time, and coughed my guts up whilst the lifeguard carried on staring into space in the other direction 😮💨
Edit: I think the original advice I was thinking of was to spit when buried in an avalanche to know which way is down.
Wear seatbelts.
I did and the t-bone accident was on my side.
My brother didn’t, and he died that day.
Used to work in the fire service. Maybe not a glamorous tip, but a lot of people were saved by bystanders knowing basic first aid and CPR. In a rural place, we’re were arriving to a scene 30+ minutes after the stopped breathing. 30 minutes without new oxygen or circulation makes massive difference in survival odds. And for traumatic injuries, making an attempt to manage blood loss is always better than nothing.
If you think something isnt normal in your body. Listen to it. Your body WILL tell you if something isnt right.
Literally saved my life from a major brain stroke. Started having the worst headache of my life except it wasnt like the rest. So i got up somehow and managed to get my dad in time. Snd today now i can continue to live judy because i listened to my body when it told me something.
Hypothermia. Heat the person up with body heat NOT hot water. Also warm socks and a hat. I also improvised some warm heating pads with towels in trash bags soaked in warm water. Spent an entire night saving someone’s life, guy doesn’t remember it because hypothermia can affect your memory.
When a child/person is having a seizure, get them on thr floor and on their side and do nothing until paramedics arrive.
My wife saved a seizing 4 year old from her mother who was flinging her around like a ragdoll screaming for help.
If you are sick, injured, or just gone through a medical event. If you get that feeling of impending doom or something just doesn’t feel right, do NOT ignore it!
I had this happen to me after I just had my second baby. I was brushed off by the nurses but the doom feeling didn’t go away and I could feel myself bleeding too much. I physically felt weaker and cold, I looked at my husband and told him I was going to die.
I ended up coding shortly after because I had severe postpartum hemorrhaging that they missed. They brought me back but I had to undergo several blood transfusions, be put on medicine for the bleeding, and have the bleeding/clots passed closely monitored.
Pay attention to your gut and other animals if you are out and about
If you are walking in the woods or swimming and suddenly it is very quiet and there is no signs of any animals when there was before something very bad is about to happen either there to you or to the area that you are immediately in
When the world goes silent all of a sudden you need to listen and find out why
Along those lines if something feels off and your stomach is doing knots and your body is telling you that you are about to put yourself in serious harm or danger you need to listen
It is much better to just say no, and to be thought of as a coward than to die for doing something stupid when every muscle in your body already told you not to do it.
Stay calm. One time, I stupidly decided to go for a hike later in the day and ended up breaking my phone, no flashlight. It got pitch black in the forest really fast, and I got completely lost off the trail. I felt myself starting to panic, so I sat down for a few minutes, collected myself, and finally ended back on the main trail and back to my car.
If I had panicked, I’d probably would have spent all my energy hiking in the wrong direction and broken an ankle in my madness. The main thing in any emergency is to do everything you can to keep yourself calm.
Not really a survival tip but “Do NOT swerve for deer in the road”.
I was coming home from college late one Friday (like 1AM) on a road bordering a state park. As I’m tooling along a deer jumps out in front of me, I hit the brakes but still hit the deer which goes tumbling off into the dark. I limp up to the next point I could pull off and look, no real damage just a dent in the hood and some blood. Come Sunday, I’m heading back to school along the same route in daylight and get to the spot I hit the deer and realize that the road is running along a ridgeline with slopes going down about 75 feet on each side. So if I had swerved for the deer and gone off the road there’s a non-zero chance I’d have been down that bank and invisible from the road if I was incapacitated. Moral of the story, don’t swerve for deer/animals that weigh less than your car.
I was told if you had a cramp in your leg accompanied by redness its a life threatening blood clot and to get emergency help immediately.
My friend had been complaining for two days about a cramp in his leg so I made him pull up the leg of his jeans and his skin was bright red. I tried not to panic as I told him he needed immediate help. I was visiting and set to catch a train in 30 minutes so he promised he’d go in.
He did not go in but he called NHS and they were like “do not move. Do not panic. Keep your heart rate calm. We’re sending someone right away.” And it was then he realized I wasn’t kidding. He made it in and apparently it was REALLY bad and if he’d waited any longer, it would’ve dislodged and he wouldve died. The doctor told him I’d saved his life. He reminds me of that from time to time too. I’m so glad I knew what the signs of a clot were.
My stepdad thought he was having a heart attack and chewed an aspirin. Turns out he was right and the doctors said it likely was the reason he lived.
Saw a news article about What 3 Words and thought it sounded really useful so told my kids to make sure they had the app on their phones in case they ever needed me to pick them up and they didn’t know where they were. Fell over and broke my ankle and had to use it to help the ambulance located me. Rang my daughter to let her know what was going on and the first thing she said was “What’s your 3 Words?” – not exactly saved my life but certainly saved time when I was sat in the snow waiting for help.
The most dangerous thing I usually do is drive. These tips are about 63% of my driving knowledge and I do pretty good:
-Don’t pass if it’s a double yellow, but especially don’t pass another car going over a hill or around a curve.
-Look before you change lanes.
-If your car engine is over-heating, turn the heat on full blast (maybe just older cars 🤷♂️ saved my a*s in a traffic jam outside Nashville coming back from spring break in ‘01).
-Assume every container in the road is filled with nails (as in try not to run it over).
-Brake. Don’t swerve. Unless you *need* to swerve, then do what you gotta do.
Wearing a life vest in any open body of water. I am a good swimmer, but I am so glad that I wore a life vest when white water rafting. The water is so cold, when you are thrown in, you go into shock. I couldn’t even breathe for a few seconds, let alone swim to the surface on my own.
Got caught in a snowstorm while hiking. I remembered a tip: “Don’t wander stay put and stay warm.”
I made a small shelter and waited. Hours later, rescue found me. If I’d kept walking, I probably wouldn’t be here. That tip legit saved my life.
Spend it while you have it. Yes, cutting down firewood, building a shelter, constructing a fish trap, etc. will take energy, which you’re instinctively trying to preserve. But worst case scenario, in a few days you’re not going to have energy anyways, and you’re way better off with some previously made investments.
If you are swimming in the sea and you are in danger or drowning or a current is taking you away, DON’T PANIC.
Look for the best way to swim in to safety. Don’t waste your energy. Adrenaline will help, but you need to dose your strength and keep swimming, even if you think it’s a lost cause.
It saved my life in the Atlantic sea.
Drive as if your own child could run out from behind of every obstacle alongside the road. Because one day, someone will.
And when braking, hit it hard right away, full brake. Braking gently, slowly, or gradually costs you meters you don’t have. Try this somewhere safe to develop the reflex.
Modern cars are built to be mostly controllable under full braking, so you won’t improve controllability by braking too slowly.
Sources: own experience, racing instructor.
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