“Just To Be Safe”: 30 Times People Had A Gut Feeling To Do Something And It Actually Saved Them
We probably all know the proverb 'better safe than sorry.' It's sometimes better to do something boring or difficult preemptively than take risks on what might happen later. These seemingly dull tasks might sometimes prove to be more important than we thought. At other times, they might even save someone's life.
One netizen was curious if other people had ever had such an experience. "What precautionary measure did you take, thinking 'just to be safe,' that unexpectedly ended up saving the day later on?" the Redditor asked. And the people delivered with all sorts of answers. From saving themselves from snow storms, taking out insurance just in time, or preventing car theft – check out the answers and upvote the ones you find the most riveting.
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Nurse here. Per usual, I was being overworked. I had over 9 patients in the ER. One patient had cancer and hadn't been feeling well. The doctor insisted he was fine. However, just to be safe I continued to regularly check in on him as he was chilling in a chair in the hallway. He started complaining of feeling super tired and off. His daughter (who also was a doctor) kind of said something along the lines of "you've had a stressful day dad. We will get you home once the doctor discharges you". Just to cover my a*s, I took his vitals. His blood pressure was 70s/40s.
I had a critical care room open and immediately rolled him in there, calling out to the doctor that something was wrong I could just feel it. The charge nurse got mad when I told her he needed that room (she didn't like that I was a travel nurse calling the shots, but I didn't care). Doctor felt I was overreacting but they repeated vitals and did a Stat scan. The guy was bleeding internally (I can't remember full details now) and they found Mets to his spinal cord. We were able to stabilize and ship him to a bigger hospital. That irritated ER doctor thanked me later, and said if that guy went home he most likely would have died that night. It felt really, really good.
All because I listened to my patient and my gut, and didn't let the stress of over 9 patients cloud my judgment.
Thank you so much for not letting the other people get in your way of making an impact with saving someone's life. This is one thing I don't get. Like I do, but at the same time. That someone life. But I know nurse and doctors have so much to deal with and extra. But I just glad it came out positive and everyone was okay.
I for some reason had the feeling that I was being watched, so I closed all the blinds and just let the dog out the back door instead of walking him.
My dog found the creep in my backyard, and dragged him by the pant leg out of a bush, thrashing him around. Based on the video the dog got at least 4 good bites in.
Imagine having this feeling all the time. I have that problem. Sometimes it goes away. But most time it there. I think it cause of childhood trauma at least that what I read. The only person I ever told about it was my husband.
As a manager, I noticed my team was getting saddled with harder work than the other teams. I informed my boss but she laughed at me and sent me packing. Since we tracked employee productivity by case worked I had a feeling I'd need some kind of proof in the future so I went back to my team, explained the situation and informed them I wanted them to keep daily logs of all of their cases and time stamp them even though the system did this automatically.
Fast forward two years. Another manager believes his employees are getting harder cases than the other teams, so he complains about it to my/his boss. His rapport with her is significant as he works the same shift, so she looks into it. After a three day secret investigation, I get one of the most aggressive and hateful emails of my career accusing me of cherry-picking millions of cases over years of work for my team. My response was to hand her daily logs from every employee for two years. 11000 sheets of paper, give or take. The absolutely incredulous look she gave me was worth it alone. "What's this?", that's 100% accurate daily logs of every employee and their cases worked. "Why do you have this?" To protect them from you when you inevitably did this.
Three days later I got my apology, turns out an employee was coming in early and scanning in my employees paperwork and tossing their cover sheets so there was no record they had done any of the difficult work. After running numbers, it was determined that the other manager was incorrect, and the evidence showed my team worked roughly 34% of difficult cases and accounted for 15% of the total workforce. The day shift employees all got into trouble for passing off hard cases.
The day I got to tell my team their logs literally saved all of our jobs was one of my best days at work, ever.
'Better safe than sorry' is what we call a precautionary principle. Even if we don't know if a certain thing will lead to harm, we should still take measures to prevent it. It is applicable in innovation, when evaluating environmental and health risks, or just in simple everyday life.
And just like everything else in life, it has its fans and critics. Especially amongst policymakers. Proponents claim that it can protect human health and the environment. Its critics say that it stunts innovation and is not based on scientific research.
For example, if a government is preparing to release a new medicine, it has to be thoroughly tested. So it can't be widely available from the get-go. But what if that new medicine could cure serious diseases? Shouldn't the government give it to all those who are in need? That's why sometimes the principle can be quite controversial.
I run a reptile and exotic animal rescue in South Texas. We are having very cold weather.
I drove out to the rescue to check on everyone ONE MORE TIME even though I'd been out there many times today.
The heat had stopped working. We ended up having to move all the reptiles to my house. They would have died tonight.
It's crowded as f**k but everyone is alive. The 90 pound tortoise in my living room is probably gonna f**k some stuff up, but he's alive.
Edit: typos
Edit 2 for photos of [critters and rescue](https://imgur.com/a/jdo4hO0) (Reminder that these are temporary emergency enclosures and as a rescue some animals are sick and/or injured).
Helped a victim of human trafficking get to a shelter.
Context: I was a medical student at the time and the city my school was in is a hub for human trafficking. I noticed a patient in the ER who had a pretty bad injury to her face was with a sketchy looking guy who was not related to her. She wasn't my patient, but I brought my gut feeling up to her doctor who then made up some excuse to talk to the patient alone and got her to help. I never talked to her myself, but I couldn't shake the vibe I got from looking at her and the man she was with.
Bought a tool for my car that is a combination glass breaker and seat belt cutter. Six months later, an EMT used it to cut me out of my car.
Now I buy them for everyone I know.
They're really cheap. My mom makes sure that everyone in our family always has one for their car. One year she gave them as stocking stuffers. I hope I never have to use it, but it's going to stay in my car just in case.
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They are mandatory here in the Netherlands/ most of Europe, these hammer types. Though I also have a small tool for it on my car key - you press it against the window in a corner and a pin vibes out at high speed and breaks the window, and there is a cutter for the belt as well. I prefer that one over the hanger as the hammer can't be attached well too my dit do in an accident it probably will slide off. My car key will stay where it is though.
Off to buy an emergency hammer now, never needed one but is this a sign?
Every car should have one; even better than a hammer, is a punch. Smaller, easier to use, take no strength or kinesthetic momentum.. They usually have a belt slasher on one end and the other end you press against the glass, push far enough and it triggers the punch and shatters the whole window. And most importantly, keep it accessible in an accident. Duct tape it on paneling, near the steering column, keep it in a storage pocket where it won't fly out during a roll, whatever works. But no point in having one when you're pinned by a belt, car flooding, and it's out of reach buried in your glove box or in behind the seat pocket, or on the floor cause it went flying. I sound like a prepper freak, but I insist all my friends and family have one. (Also pepper spray, also easy access required). ...last tip, remember, the cell phones fly during an accident; keep it secured so it's findable in the aftermath.
They're gonna be prepared. These are for you to escape on your own mainly. Keep readily available and secured so it doesn't get lost in an accident.
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This is so important. When I was working 911 dispatch we had a horrific single vehicle accident and the officer that responded didn’t have the tools and fire and rescue were still not on scene as the officer tried in vain to rescue this woman who wound up burning alive and alert to death in her car. The officer wound up needing ems and was out of work for an extended time due to the physical and psychological injuries he suffered that night.
I bought one of these for everyone in my family for Christmas this year!
The head rests in cars when taken off are actually to break the window from inside the car. The metal ends obviously.
My mother in law plied me and her son with tons of car safety equipment and we all thought she was nuts till we needed it.
Our need to better be safe than sorry can also explain anxiety disorders. Psychiatrist Randolph Nesse uses the smoke detector theory to link the two together. This way, he explains why people are having panic attacks in situations where they are quite safe.
"I started realizing that it's essential for alarms to go off," professor emeritus at the University Of Michigan said. "Even if there's just a chance of danger. When the threat is uncertain, false alarms are worth it." It’s better to be safe than sorry. "We want to ensure we get warned about every single fire."
So anxiety acts as a defense mechanism of sorts. When we feel we might be in some kind of danger, our brains tell us that it's better to be safe than sorry and ring that panic attack alarm. "If there's a lot of danger lurking outside, it’s essential to your survival to have anxiety every time you leave the house, so you can be more hypervigilant and prepared to protect yourself," psychiatrist Joanna Cheek adds.
I was scheduled for a mammography when I got 50. Somehow, it didn't work out that year, because the appointment was in Bavaria but I live in Düsseldorf. And I also thought it was not that important. But a year later, they sent me the invitation again.
I scheduled a mammography in Bavaria then, as I was visiting my parents anyway, and I thought, well, they probably aren't going to find anything, but if I have cancer and didn't have that mammography, I'm going to regret it. I expected a letter telling me that they had found nothing. But in fact, they did find something that needed further investigation. Turned out to be slow-growing breast cancer. One year earlier, it would not have been there yet. And one year later, it would have been much larger and possibly needed chemo as well as the surgery.
But as it was, they could just cut it out, and that was that.
Bought a generator 15 years ago because a hurricane was forecast. Drove 3 hours to get it. Didn’t lose power that month. Hubby rolled his eyes. Two months later, the “October” storm hit, dumped 20 inches of snow, state lost power, we lost power for 13 days. We had the wood stove and the generator, well, some lights, stove and fridge.
I wfh. I take screenshots of what my managers say in Teams. One manager said one thing, another tried to say it never happened. I produced the screenshot.
But is the 'better safe than sorry' rule always true? While all the entries on this list confirm the proverb, it doesn't quite work in all scenarios. Leadership coach Sylvia Lafair writes that it might not be so helpful in your career. The 'better safe than sorry' philosophy might hold you back from potential opportunities and greater career heights.
A Philadelphia-based recruiter, Kenneth L. Johnson, reiterates this claim. "Many of those ready for job placement hold back. They are afraid to take a risk. They claim it's better to be a generalist, to be safe rather than sorry. These folks may be passionate about their vertical talents, yet they hold back."
I got life insurance on my husband during open enrollment and we joked. “haha I’ll be a rich widow ha ha” totally joking because we have never had any policies on either of us. He got sick and passed away 2 months later. The money saved my butt and I tell everyone to get life insurance. It’s so very important.
Slept with bedroom door open the other day; we almost never do that, and honestly it was because I wanted to be able to hear for some reason. Smelled gas at midnight, turns out my daughter had turned the stove nob just a touch before going to bed 5hrs earlier. That was a scary one.
Used to have a ground floor apartment and a motion sensor camera on my patio connected to my phone. My friends and I got home ~ 4AM from being out all night and we’re chilln in the living room. Motion detected on the back patio. I dismiss it since it’s normally a stray cat or leaves blowing.
A few minutes later I decided to check out the motion recording just to see. It was a man that hopped my patio and was peeking at us through the slits in the blinds. I went to live view to see if he was still there, and he was.
I start going ballistic screaming and about to fight this guy. I’m storming to my patio door but he fled by then. Glad I checked the camera.
Not stopping: About 20 years ago I almost stopped to help a stranded motorist, saw a highway patrol behind me and knew he would stop. That night on the news I saw that he did stop and a shootout ensued after the officer noticed the ignition wire had been pulled from the distributor. The "stranded" motorist was an escaped prisoner looking for another car to steal.
Out of nowhere I decided to boil a ton of water for my son’s formula. My husband made fun of me for boiling gallons of water to store in several giant pots but then he took over the project. The next day a freak winter storm hit Texas. We lost power for a week and water for a week and a half. Because we were still in survival mode we had zero clue this storm was coming. We didn’t have much food for ourselves. But our baby boy was well fed during the storm.
I did worry about running out of formula and trekking through snow but thankfully we had also bought cans of formula a few days before the storm on a whim.
In the Reddit post, they explain that they were following hospital instructions. So I’m guessing their doctor knew best regarding formula and water supply. Edit to add: and the point is more that because they boiled and stored it, they had water to make the formula whereas otherwise they wouldn’t have had any water, sterilized or not.
This is a super mundane example but very useful to remember. Every time I'm in an airport, I take photos of my bags before checking them in.
So this one time they lose my bag and I'm sitting at the help desk and they say something like "Can you describe it? Does it have any identifying features?" and I was able to just bust out the photos. They found my bag very quickly.
Shared this story with people at a conference and now every year they all tell me they take photos of their bags, and every now and then it saves someone's a*s. On a similar note, also taking photos of room numbers and building locations.
Not me but my parents…
I was probably an early teen and my parents were leaving to go run an errand but it was kind of early about 8 or 9am so I didn’t want to go and asked to stay home.
My Dad agreed and came to ask me again and I said I wanted to stay. They ended up leaving but turned back around and my dad said, they didn’t want me staying home and I better just get up and go. After some whining I agreed to go.
I think we were gone maybe 20min when they got a call from the police that our alarm system went off and our house had been burglarized by two guys.
The police was able to get one of them but the other one got away.
Who knows in what situation I would have been in had I stayed home.
I was in the army and distant for awhile. See my grandfather after a few years. Despite my bad tendancies then, something told me to stay sober that day. Grandpa is very slow and distracted. After they leave i ask my dad how long hed been like that. "Like what? I thought he was just tired" I told him to call my grandmother and i yell NOW. Grandma takes Grandpa to hospital. Brain bleed. Doc says Gramps most likely would have died in his sleep that night. Had i drank i wouldve missed it. Edit: i was a medic, which is why i was able to catch it. And also why i drank alot. I also want to say i yelled because my dad is, despite being very intelligent, is functionally useless in a crisis and needs to be directed as such.
Randomly went with my friend to buy her new car, just needed to get out of the house. Convinced her to buy GAP insurance cause it was cheap and I wish I had gotten it for peace of mind. Her car got stolen and it instead of being stuck with the loan the insurance paid out (after 30 days or whatever) and she got another car.
Always get Gap insurance if you can afford it. If your car gets totaled, you’ll have to pay for the rest of the loan that the insurance doesn’t pay. And insurance never pays replacement costs for a car
Was coming home from sledding when I was a wee 6 years old. Just me and my dad, in the old Ford Explorer. Before we left the park, we had an argument about wearing my seatbelt (I think it was because I was bundled up and chunky, and did not want the added sensory discomfort of being strapped in to the passenger seat. Dad wins, I wear the seatbelt.
He forgets to put his on.
About a mile from our humble farmhouse, he’s going decently slow because the roads are slick, we hit ice and spun out anyways. We run right into the tree line through a barbed wire fence, and smack into a tree head-on pretty hard. Because my dad was not wearing his seatbelt, he ended up on my side of the car, head smashed into the windshield, blood EVERYWHERE.
Luckily, an older couple were driving down our relatively quiet country road and stopped to help. They drove my poor little traumatized self down the road to our house and took dad to the ER. He was thankfully fine, just needed stitches, maybe a mild concussion. I think my dad still had glass coming out from his scalp like 5 years after that, though.
Glad he was a persistent, good father and made me put my seatbelt on.
Brought my get home bag with me on a drive and my car ended up crapping out on me leaving me stranded. After evaluating my options and taking a good hard look at the situation I decided to grab my bag and walk the rest of the way home. Ended up having to keep myself fed and watered as I walked and that bag really ended up being a real life saver.
Yes this is so important I can not stress this enough. Aways have a blanket, flash light, food, water, tools, a strobe light, matches or something to start a fire. Change of cloths. And a weapon of some sort. Best bet if you can put a gun in there. All of this is incase your car dose break down. That way if no one can pick you up or your out in another state or anything you can survive. And plus it will be a lot easier on you.
When I remodeled the second floor apartment I installed fire blocking to the balloon framed walls. My dips**t brother in law started a grease fire in the downstairs kitchen while I was on vacation and the fire was contained quickly. The fire inspector said that without the fire blocking the house would have been a smoldering hole in the ground.
I once was asked if I could give someone a ride home from a local convenience store. Normally I would say so, but I decided to be nice that day. They were a lady in their mid 30s or early 40s so I figured it wasn’t that big a deal. For whatever reason, I subconsciously mentioned that I wasn’t able to buy what I went in to the store for because I forgot my wallet at home. The person says “You don’t have your wallet on you?”
I say “Nah.”
They look a little concerned, and a few moments later say they can walk to their destination just fine. Thought it was weird but didn’t think too hard about it.
Next day it’s on the news that a armed robbery took place in the exact location she asked me to take her to, and gave a description that 100% matched the person I was going to take home.
Didn’t really save myself as I had nothing to steal, but an interesting story.
Except your life. They could have stolen that. Do ya'll know who Greg Allman, of the Allman Brothers Band is? They play a song called "Melissa", sometimes mistakenly callled "Sweet Melissa"? He's an old school musician, okay? Look him up. He's in the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. One of the Greats, along with his brother. Anyway. Greg Allman's father was trying to help someone around the Christmas Holidays, and he gave this guy a ride, on his way home from work.The guy returned the favor by robbing and killing Mr. Allman. He was in the service and I guess he fought back, and the guy shot and killed him. Greg was just 2 years old at the time, and his brother Duane was only 3. Most people probably don't know that story. But, I got curious one day and found that on Wikipedia. Two little boys lost their father, when a hitchhiker robbed him of his life. I'm really glad you listened to your intuition that day.
TLDR: My paranoia about a strange guy in a car kept my house from flooding.
We had a house fire Oct 2021 and we were bouncing back and forth between our house and a rental. Christmas Eve was extra cold and our pipes were frozen in our house (1894, no insulation yet). So we decided to go to the rental for Christmas Eve.
My wife and daughter were taking 1 car and I was taking the other. When I left the house I saw a man sitting in his car across the street messing on his phone. Given the cold weather it seemed odd. When my wife left, the man pulled his car across the street to the spot she just left (this is a one way street). Since I'm further back, I watch for a bit, but he doesn't do anything, just gets back on his phone.
Eventually my wife calls and asks where I am, because she didn't bring her keys for the rental. I drove over and let her in and tell her about the guy. She encourages me to go back and point one of our security cameras his direction just in case.
When I get back he's still there, so I go inside. Once I'm inside I hear water running. In the 30 minutes I was gone the water started running again.
In the back kitchen where the fire had been, the faucet was still on and was flooding the room. I shut that off and went downstairs to check the cellar under the kitchen for water leakage. In the cellar was a cracked copper pipe spraying water across the room. So I shut off the water and cleaned up the kitchen before the damage could cause permanent problems.
When I left, the guys car was still there, but he was gone. I think he was meeting a neighbor for Christmas Eve dinner. But, if he hadn't been there, the house would have been flooding for who knows how long.
My son had graduated college and then decided to follow his girlfriend to a small town where she got her dream job. It was a small town and good jobs were hard to come by so almost a year went by with him only working part time jobs. He had hit the age where we could not have him on our medical insurance anymore . I was concerned about this and started looing into options and told him to apply to our states low income medical. For once he listened and I thank God everyday because not a month after being approved he started to have leg pain. The first two trips to the Dr. they wrote it off as a pulled muscle but the third time they ordered test to find out he had a blood clot that stretched from his lower calf up into his abdomen. Placed him right into the hospital but remember small town, did not have the expertise to take care of this 50 mile ambulance ride to bigger hospital lots of tests to find out why and a total of over $120,000 of charges when all was said and done in which he had to pay less then $20. He is good now but it did damage the vein in his leg and he had pain from it and will have to be on blood thinners the rest of his life.
I know the pain, went through it with blood clots in the lungs, and now on blood thinners for the rest of my life too, and just started having the same pain back again {Dr told me the pain is the same lv as a woman giving birth!, I'm male so wow... Im so sorry for that pain ladies!} going for a mri/scan in a week or so
Closing the curtains.
I’m sitting in my living room watching Frasier, and I can’t explain it, but I get this overwhelming feeling to close the curtains. I’m thinking to myself I’ve lost it, and it’s probably nothing.
It nags me the rest of the episode, and so I close them.
Turns out, there was a guy who would look into people’s windows to see if they lived alone. He would then SA and rob them. He hit my next door neighbor at the time.
🥺 I will make shore all my curtains are shut now. I do all the time anyway though.
Get an old box or a backpack and fill it with an extra set of old clothes (including shoes/socks/tshirt/pants), a simple first aid kit, a flashlight, some water and a roll of toilet paper. Put it in the trunk of your car. I guarantee that you will use it one day.
If you want to be even smarter, add one of those shiny emergency blankets, a whistle, duct tape and multi tool. It doesn't take up much space.
I just recently used the pants, the socks, multi tool and water at a tailgate party. The toilet paper was used several times through the years (I'm a hero for that one)
You never know!
Edit: lots of great additions to this post in comments below. I keep both a waterproof backpack AND a small box of stuff- including many of the other things mentioned. It's not from paranoia, I'm just an old Boy Scout who hates getting caught with no clean pants to wear. Be Prepared...and at least have some basics! Safe travels everyone!
I can not stress enough how important this is. If not for anything else for comfort. But mostly just incase anything happens. You will be prepared.
Threw a flashlight in my pocket when going for a day hike. We got lost in mountain lion territory and took over an hour in the dark to get out once we found the trail again. And we could hear some animal near us the whole time hiking out in the dark. Scared the bejeepers out of me, but the flashlight made it infinitely better than it could have been.
When I booked plane tickets for my honeymoon, I put my maiden last name rather than what I would be changing my last name to. Saved the day because my ex-fiance cheated and I called off the wedding. Had that plane ticket been with the last name I never took… I probably wouldn’t have been able to get the voucher from the airline. It was hard enough getting them to give me one with my real last name.
Was buying a cash bag to put in my backpack. One was water proof and the other one was not. I thought “I can’t imagine why I would need it to be water proof but better safe than sorry I guess.” Like 2 days later a Dr Pepper explodes in my backpack.
I have a travel handbag (Billabong) that is waterproof. Thank goodness because I dropped it once at the beach in Umhlanga and my phone didn't get wet at all.
Bringing an umbrella. Both for rain and for too much sun on a hot day.
It was around 1:30am a couple months back. I was laying in bed, struggling to sleep. My husband had already passed out next to me an hour or so earlier. I put my phone on the charging dock on my bedside table (ringer off) so it wouldn’t distract me anymore - but I couldn’t bring myself to look away from it. I got a weird feeling in my gut, like there was something I was supposed to do but I didn’t know what.
I’m laying there looking at my phone’s locked screen when it lights up - my sister is calling! Only thing is, it’s 1:30am. My sister is a nursing student and goes to bed at like 9pm. I grab it and answer.
It’s not my sister. A girl’s voice I don’t recognize asks me, “Hey, is this ____’s sister?” I respond yes, and she goes on to tell me my sister’s been roofied at the bar they’re at together, she can’t drive, my sister refused an ambulance and she’s now showing OD symptoms.
I shake my husband awake (I’m 5’2 110lbs I cannot lift another adult human) and we’re in the car speeding another town over so I can get my sister. The whole time I am thinking ‘what would have happened if I had gone to sleep?’ I’d never been so thankful for insomnia.
Sister is fine - she had severely low blood pressure, body spasms, paralysis, vomiting - the works. Stayed with her for the weekend to make sure she was okay (physically yes, mentally no).
I’m a nurse. I was relatively new at the time of this.
I had a patient (50s, female) who was in for an NSTEMI (heart attack, but not the type of heart attack everybody pictures). She’s been straight chillin all day, she’s waiting for an inpatient bed, we’ve gotten her aspirin, she’s got a heparin drip going, we’ve got PRN nitro for chest pain… patient calls me in to let me know that her chest pain has returned, 5/10 pain, and she would like some nitro. I say sure no problem, I go get her nitro, give it to her. Patient seems fine: no obvious distress, no change in her vital signs, talking and joking with me and her husband.
Something in me was pushing me to grab a new EKG even though she’d had one not that long ago and she was on the telemetry monitor. I go grab the EKG machine just to be extra thorough… big fat STEMI. Big ol heart attack. Rushed her to the cath lab and she ended up getting several stents placed, but she pulled through.
It was the first time as a nurse I felt personally responsible for saving a life (obvs the cath lab team did more than I did lol), and it’s because I just wanted to be extra precautionary. Now I always get an EKG with any kind of change in chest pain.
My husband insisted on buying a wet/dry shop vac when we bought our house. I was skeptical, but I didn't argue too hard against getting one. We had towels and don't do any kind of building, but if he really wanted one, I decided to just let him be excited about it and not rain on his parade.
That damn wet/dry vac has saved our butts twice in the last year that we've been here. Once (the second time), he used it to clean up after he replaced a part on the bathroom sink. But the first time, he was washing dishes and, somehow, the whole damn drain pipe fell out. Dumped an entire sink full of dirty water all over the cabinets and the floor. I hear "Oh my god!" and "I got this!" By the time I walked into the kitchen, he had gotten the wet/dry vac out of the laundry room, and less than 5 minutes later there wasn't a drop of water on the floor.
He was nice enough not to say "I told you so"
I was never one to want the aisle seat at the movies, but for some reason, I wanted it that night.
My friends and I were in college, and on a snowy night, we went to the movies.
For whatever reason that night I decided I wanted the aisle seat.
Halfway through the movie. I see a light behind the screen that made the side of the screen not show up well. I few seconds later, there were flames. No one noticed. I couldn't believe it. I whispered to my roommates that we needed to go, and there was a fire. 5 or six of us got up and left.
No alarms were going off. The screen was clearly on fire, and still no one noticed. We got up to the top of the stairs, and everyone was watching the movie. Right as we were exiting, I yelled into the theater, "The screen's on fire! You need to leave!"
We had to go downstairs to the lobby. We were ahead of everyone else because everyone else had to gather their hats, mittens, and coats. The lobby was empty of customers, and all the concession stand workers were sweeping and making popcorn. Still, no alarms were going off.
I yelled down to the people at the concession stand, "There's a fire in the theatre 6!" They don't react. I yelled down as we were rapidly going down the stairs. They had no idea what I was talking about. I finally had to go right up to the concession stand and say "there is a FIRE in the theater!" They yelled back to me "there's a fire in the theater?!"
"YES! That's what I've been trying to tell you!"
I don't know if I would have noticed the fire and gotten out as safely if I hadn't been sitting on the aisle seat that night.
Bottled water. I had mentioned to my mum that we should get a few bottles of water to keep just in case we needed it. About a week afterwards we had a nasty storm and they had to shut off our water for a few days. The supermarkets all nearby ran out of bottled water from people caught unprepared.
My son was extremely colicky. He would only sleep ON me so we spent the first six months of his life sleeping on the chaise part of the couch.
This one evening, we were laying on the area rug (it was super soft and plush) and he fell asleep. I was stoked!! I could sleep again in my bed!!
However, I just didn’t feel right leaving him there. I carefully moved him to his bed, and it took a while but he eventually got back to sleep.
The next morning, I was awakened by my dog barking at me. One thing to note, this dog NEVER barked in the house. If he wanted to wake me up, he’d jump into my bed and do it that way.
When I got up to let him out, the carpet was soaked. I was pissed because I thought the dog peed (he was housebroken) in my bedroom. Turns out, we had a pipe burst and the entire house had a minimum of 2” of water throughout.
I shudder to think about what could have happened if I had left my son on the area rug. It’s something I had never done before and wouldn’t think was the acceptable thing to do but I was so sleep deprived.
We were having our pipes replaced in the front yard. Before leaving for work, my boyfriend decided last minute to move his new truck out from under the car port and park it on the street. Later that day, the ditches were being filled in and the backhoe operator backed into the carport, causing the entire structure crash down off the house - right where the truck would have been.
When my wife and I started dating, we were going to the same college close to home. My house was between hers and the college so she'd go to my place and we'd carpool to college. When it was my turn to drive, she'd park in a very specific spot in my yard. One day my step dad put his car he was selling in that spot so that day we both drove to school. That afternoon a big storm hit and a tree came down crushing my step dads car. Had my wife parked there like she normally would have, her car would have been destroyed.
My dad taught me never just stumble out of the house, have a plan for what you are doing. Always have enough cash hidden on you for a meal and a phone call.
It's saved my life many times. There was a lot of advice after that, like having emergency kit in the car, change of clothes, cold weather gear if you're going somewhere cold, but that first set up top was a base for success.
First time I read hitchhikers guide to the galaxy I laughed, because yeah, you gotta bring your own towel. Never expect anyone else to provide it.
For real. Soap, too. You'd be surprised. Or, maybe not. I like being as prepared as I can be for some of life's eventualities! Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it! Right?
I have anxiety and tend to over prepare even when it doesn't matter.
Well, on a trip my husband and I were taking, I bought a bag of snacks and instant food when we were getting ready to leave a big city. This is one of his pet peeves because it's extra stuff to carry and he's not big on junk food. Well, too bad, I am! He voiced his annoyance, but we left and got our s**t ready to catch a bus to our next destination.
Now, this was not a developed region. It wasn't even a populated region. We were taking a bus across a desert. There was going to be a stop along the way for dinner, but other than that it was a nonstop drive.
Wouldn't you know, the bus broke down halfway between the starting point and where the dinner stop was supposed to be. No food on board, no drinks. This is basically a sleeper bus.
My snacks saved us. By the time the bus was up and running and we got to the stop, the restaurant was closed. (Not in America, so it wasn't a 24/7 rest stop.) But I had bought jerky, instant noodles, and a few other things that we were able to make a really s****y dinner that still had carbs, protein, and fruit.
And now that one instance gives me a free pass to collect snacks wherever I go.
My ex and I used to go on lots of bike rides. She never wanted to wear a helmet because it would “mess up her hair”
Before a bike ride I asked, as always, if she was going to wear her helmet. She said no but this time I insisted that she did. While on said bike ride her wheel got stuck in the streetcar tracks and she went flying over her handlebars. Helmet got scuffed up pretty bad. Aside from some scrapes, bruises and a hematoma, she was alright.
After seeing the state of my 3 year olds bike helmet after he crashed into a post, even though he was only on a balance bike. I will never let anyone ride one without a helmet.
Rotated my pantry and completely re-stocked everything in 2019 - pantry, toiletries, haircare, medicines, and learned self-sufficiencies like doing my hair at home. Also went on a huge overseas tour during 2019. Also moved company software from on site to cloud early 2019.
Partner thought I'd gone wacky, but it was incredibly convenient.
Randomly felt moved to start a health insurance policy for my cat when she was 14, thinking it would come in handy if she ever needed emergency surgery for an accident or something. It was already tough to find a policy that would cover a cat that old, but I was weirdly determined, and I found one. I didn't want to have to choose between "put her to sleep because I don't have the cash for an unexpected but fixable veterinary expense" vs. "fix it."
Approximately a year later, she started limping. Took a few months to diagnose, thought it would be some mystery injury, but it turns out she had cancer — terminal. Having the insurance was a godsend; without it, it might've limited the number and types of tests and vet visits we would've been able to do to get a proper diagnosis (would've been a huge shock and very painful for her to just pass away without us ever finding out why), and when her vet prescribed a pricey painkiller that dramatically improved her quality of life in her final week or two, it was a huge relief not to have to worry about how to afford it.
It's painful enough to lose a pet. Having financial help doesn't make that loss ANY less painful... but having health insurance for her actually did make the situation slightly less stressful and give me peace of mind, knowing I could keep her comfortable. I'm still thankful for the small amount extra time the medicines gave us with her, too. Hard to put a price on things like that.
Strange that I'm reading this now because I did exactly the same thing for my senior cat last month. She was a senior already when I adopted her and a couple of days ago she gave me a huge scare by drinking all of her water in one go! We lost her brother to kidney failure so I called the vet. Turns out she had only knocked the water out of the bowl ... she is fine!
I'm a manager of a small chain of retail stores. I set up a back-up card processing system in case of internet outage. Most of our customers prefer to pay in debit, and due to processing fees we prefer to let them.
In 2022, there was an epic internet outage. Debit was down across the country.
But my back-up solution worked. So, for one glorious day, *Walmart* wasn't able to accept debit, but *my tiny chain* was.
My boss hadn't been sure about the amount of freedom he gave to me before that, but I got a lot of extra leash starting that day.
Checked behind my car to find 3 kid bikes back here. I almost ran them over.
There was this girl I knew who would persistently beg me to get her to meet Jon Bon Jovi. We were in our 20’s, I’d met him several times, and she kinda latched on. She was fun.
One night we made reservations at the band hotel in Philly. I often went to that hotel and would see the guys in the bar. She came with.
**This was in November 2001**
In the middle of the night the fire alarm goes off. It wouldn’t turn off. The hotel came over the loudspeaker and said everyone stay in your rooms. They just kept repeating, stay where you are.
My friend went into a panic attack about how we couldn’t stay there. (We’re NYers, fyi.) She could hardly breath or walk. She leaned on me down 17 flights. Because I wasn’t staying… “just to be safe.”
We got to the lobby, i kicked open the fire door, there was Jon. Full on bed head.
My friend recovered quite swiftly.
*Nobody knows why the alarm went off.*
Obviously the fire alarm went off so your friend could meet Jon Bon Jovi.
My family was going to go to the mall one day but we had my nieces soccer game that day. I thought the game was early in the morning so we were getting ready to go and I texted my sister one last time to make sure I had the time right. Turns out I had the time wrong and if the game had been earlier that morning and we had gone to the mall like I had planned later in the afternoon we would have been in a mass shooting at a mall in Texas.
Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Allen,_Texas_mall_shooting
Not me, but my fiancé. He had decided in November to bump up his car insurance, and add comprehensive. In December, someone set fire to the inside of his truck cab in the middle of the night. (We live in a trailer court, and weird s**t had been happening to vehicles in a 10 mile radius for months. The cops dismissed it as electrical.) If he hadn't added that, we would have been absolutely screwed.
I moved into my parents' old house and I fought my dad tooth and nail to get insurance for it. After 3 months, I finally convinced him to get insurance on it. About a year later, the house caught fire. We found out it was in his office area caused by a faulty power strip.
I brought a bunch of stuff to my Grandma's funeral, including a PA speaker, associated wires, projector and screen. An hour before the service starts, the place where the funeral was being held had its TV and sound system stop working. While my family was discussing with the funeral staff on getting refund and rescheduling the funeral, I just walked calmly to my car, where the audio/video equipment was, grabbed the things (walking back and forth) and started setting up my equipment. My siblings saw what I was doing and helped me set things up. The funeral started an hour later than usual, but at least people were able to see my Grandma in happy photos for one last time.
Thank goodness I also brought a laptop, because the funeral staff only wanted the slideshow on a USB flash drive, and my projector didn't read USB flash drives.
I work for an airline company. Part of my job includes checking visas, especially if passengers are going to India. I wrote down when the visa expires on the boarding pass just to make sure I checked the documents.
One of my colleagues got into huge trouble because he checked in a passenger with an expired visa. He ended up getting detained on layover in England and deported back to America. And now our company has to pay the very high fine for the visa violation.
Came home from vacation a day early and drove straight through. Hadn't shut off the water heater and came home to a burst water heater that had been running a few hours not days. Any longer and the house would've needed a complete remodel.
Many, many years ago when I was a grad student in CS, I got along very well with the nice ladies who ran the office. They were going to make an office supply order and asked me if I could think of anything that they should add to it. I thought and said, "A bucket and a mop," which came in handy the next time the server room AC broke.
Asked my friend to pull over so we could catch a Pokémon in Pokémon go (if you try to catch Pokémon whilst doing the speed limit on Pokémon go, the Pokémon will jump out automatically) (we both like the game so it was fine) which took like a minute or two.
Continued down the highway, and came across a car accident which had happened literally a minute or two before we got there.
If we didn’t stop to catch that damn Pokémon, we would have been in it.
My husband and I used to drive a car that had a little pull out drawer in the dash. We had a one hitter for weed in it. Never really drove around with it, sometimes we did and honestly just forgot about it. One random day before he left I told him to take that one hitter out of the car. He did. He got pulled over and a cop unlawfully searched the car. We live in a no tolerance state so it’s hard telling what would have happened.
One night, before going to bed, something told me to check upstairs. Everyone else had fallen asleep already. When I got upstairs, someone bumped the knob to our gas stove and it was just burning away😭 Our house has caught on fire before. So, just seeing that brought back many flashbacks.
Bought some extra insurance thing when I was buying my first car in 2015. It wasn’t that much more considering, so I thought why not. Fast forward to 2018, my dickhole of a half nephew who had his permit offered to drive us back to the hotel after celebrating grandmas birthday at the farm. Pea brain decides to floor it trying to race my uncle driving a separate car, despite being warned to take it easy, and next thing you know the engine is smoking and we are stuck on the side of the road in no where Iowa. After much trouble and stress, I find a paper referencing the extra insurance thing buried in my car paperwork folder from the dealership. I was ~40 miles away from being over the mileage limit, but Hyundai ended up paying for the towing from no where Iowa to Mankato, MN and they replaced the whole engine.
Not taking my Ritalin when I started to take pseudoephedrine. I didn’t want to take Ritalin because I wanted to rest(Maybe even nap) but then I learned you aren’t supposed to be taking them both anyways because they’re both vasoconstrictors
Life tip: don't just tell your doctor about all your meds, tell your pharmacist. Doctors are well educated on dosage and useage of medication, but pharmacists are better educated in potential interactions.
Avoided going to the beach just post Covid when people were allowed to go out. But on the radio it said high wind warning and to avoid beaches.
So we did not go, but next day there was a massive search operation for a child swept into the sea due to a rouge wave around the beach we had planned to visit. The boy’s body was never found.
We have 2 boys, at that time my elder son was 11 years old.
[news link](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/12-year-old-boy-swept-sea-wave-northern-california-n1254896)
My husband keeps fix a flat and other items like that for me and the kids. It has helped so many times. I keep the first aid kits stocked with many variety of bandage and meds. #1 is always the eye wash. When it’s needed you don’t want to fumble around trying to find it
What do you do that you have so many occasions to need these things?
Not my own experience. But my dad. Back in 1992 there was the Landers (California) earthquake. The week prior to it hitting. My dad was experiencing what we later learned was heart failure. So he wasn’t feeling well so he was sleeping on the couch. Finally the night before it hit, “I am feeling better so I am going to sleep in bed tonight.” If he hadn’t felt better the biggest chunk of the fireplace would have fallen down on top of his head.
Another time after the quake he again wasn’t feeling well, but with a ruptured appendix (or symptoms of it), so he was in and out of bed. He has this dream/hallucination that he has a “visitor” who asks him if he wants to live or wants to die? And if he wants to make sure the family will be ok or not? Gives him two options stay in Landers or move back to the Midwest where mostly my mom’s family lives. He chose us to go to Midwest. He was able to live until 2011.
when i was 15 and learned how to drive, i decided that if my brakes ever failed, i’d just pull the ebrake as hard as possible. fast forward to being 19, getting off the freeway going 70 down a hill towards a mountain wall and traffic, and lo and behold, brakes don’t brake. they had gotten waterlogged from the wet freeway. pulled the ebrake as hard as possible, spun out and landed in a safe spot. i would have died that day if not for that, i was maybe 800 feet from a mountain wall going down hill and pulling the ebrake saved my life.
Didn't happen to me, but a friend. And it's something others might someday benefit from knowing. If you're ever a passenger in a car and the driver has a heart attack (or anything else that incapacitates them), the process is grab the steering wheel with one hand and use the other to put the car in neutral then slowly pull on the hand brake. Yes, I know this may not be possible in every car, but do what you can. Only after you have control, should you worry about looking for the hazard lights button.
Keeping a little 12v motorized tire inflator in my car. Got a flat when I went camping once, and it saved the day. The leak was just from the valve, so once I re inflated my tire and tightened the cap, it held for the rest of the trip, and got me home no problem. I was backcountry camping on crown land, and a four hour drive from home, so getting roadside service would have been expensive.
Memorized the map of a park before a date.
Nothing crazy, so no TW needed.
I agreed to meet for coffee and a walk with a guy from an app. Late afternoon, very popular park. I’m paranoid though and like to know my exit routes. In my profile it stated I was working as a chef, and that I never wanted kids.
We are less than 3 minutes into this and he says, “women who work in kitchens are delusional if they think they can make it in that industry. They’re too emotional.” At which point it’s totally over for me and now in my mental map sorting the fastest route back to my car.
He followed that a minute or so later with a comment about how I would change my mind about kids, because he wanted kids.
Didn’t even realize I was walking us back to our cars. Date was maybe 10 min from beginning to end and he had the audacity (I don’t even know if that’s the right word to describe completely oblivious confidence) to ask if I wanted to go back to his place.
I did the same thing on another date, but I told him out right I wasn’t into him and this f*****g buffoon with a sneer of incredulity says, “you could at least give me a blowie for the trouble.”
I laughed as I walked away.
But yea. Always know your way out, rule number 2 in my dating book.
Ohh third story of know your way out. I was living in London and it was the night of the World Cup, England v. France. This guy asked to meet for a drink after the game. We settled on a place, and my true crime nerd brain memorized three potential safety routes. Well shockingly it did not go great. England lost, and I had told him before agreeing to meet I wouldn’t be going home with him after a first date. We’re only partway into our first drink and he’s goading me to “make up the loss” for him. I turn him down, and am quickly losing my patience. When he dead eyes me and says, “you have until I get back from the toilet to reconsider or we’re gonna have a problem.”
I waited til he was out of sight, handed the bartender (who overheard) a tenner to pay for my drink and used escape route A to get on the next train home (always memorize train and bus schedules if they are part of your escape plan).
I got a tetanus shot on a whim one day since I was past due for mine and I work in a high risk industry. The pharmacist actually tried to talk me out of it, said that that I don’t need the shot until after I get cut by something. (I get dinged up by enough rusty things to know that this was not realistic for me)
One month later, I was trying on boots at a thrift store and one of those big industrial tacks they use for security tags went clean through my big toe. Not in. Through. I still got the boots though, they’re really cute. The store still didn’t give me a discount though.
A friend of mine bought a PoS beat a*s 87 Civic. It had "racing harnesses" but the passenger seat's shoulder strap was snapped. We were about to take a ride in it, so I tied it up as hard as I could before we left just in case. We ended up smoking weed and playing videogames.
Fast forward 2 weeks and my friend calls and said he wrecked his car going too fast, smashed a tree at ~50mph, with a passenger. That passenger was only prevented from being ammunition in a windshield cannon because of the knot I tied. Every other strap was too loose.
Get real seatbelts and wear them.
Well, I took tomorrow off even though I arrived home from Europe today. Good thing I did because it’s 11PM and I’m currently waiting to take off at Philadelphia and have been waiting for hours.
*Edit* Scratch that. Apparently you can’t wait over 3 hours to de-ice so looks like I’m stuck in Philly.
*Edit Edit* My pilots are determined to get to Indy so they’re going to try again.
*Edit Edit Edit* They did it! We’re taking off! We’re one of the very few planes actually leaving tonight!
OP? Did you get there alive and safe? We need an edit edit edit edit!
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Was really sick one January and throwing up so much I had severe pain in my right abdomen. Wife thought it was my appendix and called an ambulance. At the hospital they did a ct scan and found my appendix was fine but I also had a lump on my left kidney. Had it removed to be safe and found out it was cancer in the early stages.
Our old dishwasher broke down. Together with my husband we decided we would get one at a nearby 1kea on a given day. That given day he had lots of work meetings and I had class that lasted a bit longer so it was later than the time we agreed to go. We still tried and then we saw a big traffic jam on the highway, decided to go back home, eat dinner and try other day. Turns out that there was a big accident with several cars being on fire and some people got seriously wounded. If we had gotten out on the time we planned we would have been involved.
I was hanging at a popular mudding/offroad spot in the woods with my buddy and his old pick-up. I was feeling uneasy all day and decided to leave early. Side note, his pick-up didn't have working seat belts. Sure enough, later that night he and another person were jack knifed, flipped the truck, and were ejected. I would have been the 3rd victim if I didn't heed my odd feeling. Both occupant and driver lived but with a long bit of recovery ahead of them.
Was really sick one January and throwing up so much I had severe pain in my right abdomen. Wife thought it was my appendix and called an ambulance. At the hospital they did a ct scan and found my appendix was fine but I also had a lump on my left kidney. Had it removed to be safe and found out it was cancer in the early stages.
Our old dishwasher broke down. Together with my husband we decided we would get one at a nearby 1kea on a given day. That given day he had lots of work meetings and I had class that lasted a bit longer so it was later than the time we agreed to go. We still tried and then we saw a big traffic jam on the highway, decided to go back home, eat dinner and try other day. Turns out that there was a big accident with several cars being on fire and some people got seriously wounded. If we had gotten out on the time we planned we would have been involved.
I was hanging at a popular mudding/offroad spot in the woods with my buddy and his old pick-up. I was feeling uneasy all day and decided to leave early. Side note, his pick-up didn't have working seat belts. Sure enough, later that night he and another person were jack knifed, flipped the truck, and were ejected. I would have been the 3rd victim if I didn't heed my odd feeling. Both occupant and driver lived but with a long bit of recovery ahead of them.
