10. My plane landed in a field and flipped over

“Flying in a single-engine Cessna 210, my family was on the final leg of a 2 week camping trip. My dad, piloting, had started the decent down when at 3,000 feet, our engine started rattling uncontrollably. 10 year old me remembers seeing the oil temperature gauge in the red, but not understanding the significance. As the rattling got worse, my dad shut the engine off and radioed Mayday to the tower. That’s when I started to pray. We were only 5 ish miles from our final destination, but we had to make an emergency landing in a field.

I remember staring out the window at the ground thinking about my cat, and my mom leaning back from the co-pilot seat to tell my brother and I to pull our legs up for the crash position. My dad exchanged a few other words with the controller and then shut the rest of the plane down.

We hit the ground a little fast at 80 knots (normal is 65-70 kts). Our front gear struck an irrigation pipe running across the field which caused it to shear off. Without a front gear, our nose hit the field and we went belly-side up.

When I came to, everything was eerily dark, and I was hanging upside down. My dad basically ripped the doors off the back of the plane to get my brother and I out. My family was shaken up, but okay.

The farmer appeared minutes later, absolutely astonished. Then, five news helicopters starting circling. Traffic was backed up for miles around the field as people strained to get a look. Then the paramedics arrived. My mom likes to joke they were a bit disappointed to find ‘victims of a plane crash’ to be standing around chatting. The worst injury of the lot was my cut lip which I cut with my own teeth in the jolt of the crash. And my parents got some bruising from seat belts a few days later.

The farmer’s wife gave my brother and I cheese-its and honey sticks and I can’t eat them to this day. And the first thing I did when I got back home was hug my cat, as a ten year old does.

As far as my individual story goes, I got my pilot’s license three years ago at the age of 18. I’m now in school to become an aerospace engineer where I hope to one day design planes that save people like this one saved my life. It failed in the most elegant of ways, and my dad’s quick thinking and training was able to see us to the ground alive.

And for those wondering what happened to the plane, an unidentified object clogged the oil filter in the engine leading to a piston overheating, snapping, and punching a hole in the side of the engine.” — iforgottoeatlunch

11. I survived a shooting a few years ago

“Survived the Isla Vista shooting of 2014. I still get jumpy when I hear fireworks or other loud noises. My immediate response is almost always to scramble under the nearest table. PTSD is a bitch.” — gnadanaid