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
12. A tornado swept across our state
“I survived a nearly EF-5 tornado.
A few years ago, living in rural Arkansas, the weather got bad. This is hardly an uncommon occurrence. My now-fiance and I had just gotten a puppy that very day, and we also had two cats at home. We lived in a duplex. Around, 7:30ish? our phones started alerting to severe weather, and we switched on the TV to watch the radar. Tornado. Heading our way. I threw my cats in the bathroom, while my partner went outside to watch the weather. It was pouring rain. Never heard such heavy rain before. And then – the rain stopped. He rushed in, threw everything out of the innermost closet, and we hunkered in there with the puppy. He texted his parents: Tornado. And we waited.
They say it sounds like a freight train, and they’re right. The building was shaking, and there was this roar. I was terrified. Holding the puppy and my phone with one arm/hand, holding my partner’s hand with the other, just waiting for the building to collapse on me. He said he was quite certain we were about to die.
And then… it stopped. We came out of the closet, and out of the house to look around, dazed, just like the neighbors. I called my parents a few towns over – they owned the property, so I was telling them what was damaged. Our duplex was fine, some minor stuff only. A tree had fallen within inches of both another duplex and a neighbor’s vehicle. Another tree had fallen on a third duplex – that one was totalled by the insurance company, it’s an empty slab now. But no one in our immediate neighborhood was killed or injured. A lady in the destroyed one had been luckily sheltering in her bathroom, as the tree came down right over her bed.
We were all unhurt, but it was the most terrifying experience of my life, because the tornado – which did cause several deaths elsewhere – had literally jumped over our little neighborhood. Had it stayed on the ground, we’d surely be dead now.” — hockeypup
