“Just In Time”: 25 Moments When Fate Intervened To Save Someone’s Life

Life can change in an instant. A single decision made in a split second can mean the difference between life and death. A Reddit user asked , “[Serious] What split-second decision have you made in your life, that if you hadn’t made it you would have died?” The responses were both chilling and awe-inspiring.

Here are some of the most gripping stories shared by users who credit their survival to a moment’s instinct.

#1

I’m here today because I woke up late on Sept. 11th and decided not to go into work.

#2

I went to ride my bike and almost forgot my helmet, I honestly debated grabbing it since I was only planning on doing a few miles; last minute I decided I might as well have it and then half a mile out I got hit by a car. Helmet was busted as hell but other than a concussion I was fine.

#3

Not taking that pill. And then decided to quit all d***s. 🤞🏽🙏🏽 two months sober.

#4

My son is a lifeguard. One of the girls in the pool got a suddenly intense headache. He sat her down and looked her over. There was fluid coming out of her ear. He put her on a spinal board just to be on the safe side, and called emergency. He found out later that the fluid leaking from her ear was spinal fluid she’d had a rupture of some sort that caused her spinal fluid to leak out her ear. If he hadn’t spotted that, she would have died later that day.

#5

I woke up in the middle of the night because of a voice in my head yelling at me, telling me to lock a nearby door. I reluctantly got up, locked the door then fell back asleep immediately. About 30 minutes later somebody tried breaking in.

#6

Grabbing a middle schooler’s backpack as she was about to cross without looking and staying on the sidewalk instead of crossing the road. (I was in high school at the time)

The reason?

The red car that had almost ran me over a few weeks before was barrelling down the street at high speed.

Car zooms past at the moment the kid and myself would have been in the middle of the road.

Same driver. I recognized the shade of blonde hair.

#7

Previously I was a biker. I’m sure you all know the risks. One time it was any other day riding to work. I pull up to the lights and check the car next to me. Girl mid 20s on her phone – revved my engine to get her to look at me. She doesn’t. She proceeds to go straight on into my lane.

I had planned for this. Half the reason I don’t ride now is other people being morons.

#8

English is not my first language, sorry if I make some mistakes.

My friend and I were chilling at a skate park. There was a Basketball hoop made out of stone. I was sitting right underneath that hoop. Suddenly I got the urge to stand up, Seconds later this massive thing came crashing down where I sat seconds before. I didn’t comprehend it in that moment but I often think about it from time to time and a shiver goes down my spine.. my friend was scared as f**k..

#9

Driving 80 miles per hour on a lonely interstate in the middle of the night. Decided to change lanes for no reason, and ended up missing a crumpled car in the middle of the lane I just left. It looked like a professionally crushed car that had fallen off of a truck. No light lenses or reflectors.

#10

Years ago, I parallel parked my car on a busy street in Hollywood where I lived at the time. The street was on a hill and my car was parked on the downhill side of traffic a couple hundred feet from a blind curve in the road. I checked for cars and got out of the driver’s side of the car, being careful not to step too far in the street. There were no cars going by at the time.

Suddenly, a voice inside my head shouted “FREEZE!!! DON’T MOVE!!!” I instinctually froze and pressed myself up against my car even though I had no idea why. Out of nowhere a large city bus came barreling around the curve going at least 60mph and missed hitting me by just a couple inches. I can still feel the wind from the bus on the back of my neck at it blew past me. If I had taken just half a step back to lock my car door, I would have been flattened and that would have been it.

Even worse, my future husband was with me and would have witnessed it all. It still shakes him up to think about how close he came to losing me that day.

#11

Was in a bombing. Knelt down to sign something when the detonation happened. Glass shards were a hair away from ki**ling me. The person who gave me the paper to sign technically saved me, they’re fine too.

#12

I got a couple, but I’ll go for the biggest one.

Fell snowboarding, and had a splitting ‘migraine’ the next day. Went to the GP, deciding after a night without sleep it was worth the early phonecall and appointment. He took one look at me and proceeded to give me a course of oral steroids and schedule an MRI. I was completely dissociated, just kinda thought maybe he was looking to see if I’d twinged my neck.

Damage at C1. For context, C1 is your first vertebrae at the base of your skull and by damage I’m referring to spinal cord damage. A very small lesion and some swelling which was now being treated by the oral steroids course. After the course, another MRI showed the area of damage more clearly – I also now had a severe movement disorder, and minor issues with my breathing alongside chronic neuroinflammation which would eventually result in another lesion (C5/6) that hit 4 years later, paralysing me.

BUT if my GP hadn’t seen fit to prescribe outside of his remit and give me those initial steroids there is no telling if that C1 lesion could have enlarged and just straight up k**led me at 21. My neurologist tells me that he did possibly save my life that day.

#13

Deciding to go to A&E over the “gas pains” in my abdomen instead of going to sleep (I was already in bed).

Appendix was about to blow by the time the surgeon got to it that same night.

I remembered something specifically about looking out for pain when you lift your left leg, and since healthcare is free here, decided not to chance it despite the symptoms being relatively mild.

#14

When I was in 9th grade I was walking to church on Sunday morning. My friends stopped and asked if I wanted to go riding with them. I thought about going but something stopped me from getting in the car. Later that afternoon 2 of my friends in the car died in an accident.

#15

Fell asleep at the wheel, woke up and corrected my steering without panicking.

Drowsy driving is just as dangerous as drunk driving. Never again !

#16

A bit of a story, but here goes.

Back in 2020, I was in an ae relationship. Not so much direct physical violent (although that was there); instead, it was constant mental and emotional abuse with some sexual at thrown in. This was particularly damaging as I struggle with mental health. To be honest, I was contemplating ending my life for most of the last 6 or so months her and I were together. One day, her and I had a MASSIVE fight that ultimately ended the relationship.

Her and I ended up splitting up during quarantine, roughly around mid April. Most of the people I was close to were immunocompromised, some lived states away, and the rest just weren’t good for me to be around in my fragile mental state. Aside from a few nights at a hotel I was gifted from my parents (one who lived 15 hours away, the other one is badly immunocompromised), I slept in the bathroom at work. She (and whatever flavor of the week she was dating) continued to harass me, call my work, call my parents, and (later, during summer) somehow found the contact information of a girl I had just begun dating and began harassing her as well.

While I am eternally thankful for my boss giving me shelter and giving me an air mattress, it was so incredibly lonely in that bathroom. I remember hugging a pillow and convincing myself, through tears, that the pillow was my friend and that I wasn’t alone. I spent my birthday, which falls towards the end of April, alone in a grocery store parking lot bawling my eyes out. Never in my life was I so desperate for a hug.

After a couple months of this, my mother found me a new apartment. Quarantine restrictions had JUST lifted in my state (I live in SE Wisconsin). While I still had to keep a massive amount of distance from my mother, it was still nice to see someone who actually liked me.

As a bit of background, I am very interested in meteorology. I love stormchasing and dream of making a career of it, or anything related to meteorology for that matter. I had not chased a single storm for over a year, for obvious reasons. The week I moved in, I saw on my weather app that there was a storm scheduled to hit about two hours or so away during the weekend. I went and chased it, and, for the first time in years, I started to recognize the reflection in the mirror.

A week later on Friday, I realized that I badly wanted to chase another storm. So, I began checking my weather apps. Nowhere in Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, etc was forecasted to even have rain. So, in desperation, I dug deeper and found that there, in fact, was going to be a storm. Issue was, it was all the way near Rapid City, SD. Eleven to twelve hours away from me.

I decided at noon on Friday that, once I got off at 6:30, I would pack a bag, eat dinner, talk to a couple friends, and then take off to South Dakota, driving through the night. I had never been to South Dakota nor traveled by myself, and I had never driven through the night before. But, screw it, what do I have to lose?

I was in southern Minnesota on I-90 around 4AM, about to break the South Dakota border. I was exhausted, losing strength, and about ready to give up. I tried to check into a hotel, only to find that I had forgotten my cards at home and that the hotel did not take Apple Pay. Regardless, something told me to keep going. Something told me everything would be okay. So, I plodded on into South Dakota.

Then I saw the sunrise. That sunrise was the light at the end of the tunnel. It was a beacon of hope that my past tried to convince me no longer existed. That sunrise told me that the excruciating pain, loneliness, and s******l ideations were temporary. It was then that I learned everything was going to be okay.

I still remember audibly screaming “I can’t believe I’m actually doing this! I’m actually doing this!”. It was always my dream to travel the country to chase storms. I turned the nightmare I was living into the dream I always wished for. I took so many pictures, videos, live streamed both chases (two for one weekend!), took in the alien landscape I found myself in, and finally felt human again.

Not only was I free, I actually believed it too. Ever since then, although I still struggle with mental health, I have a new purpose. The driver’s seat became my home, the open road became my best friend, and the sun became my wife. I didn’t care if she wasn’t human. The warmth, guidance, and support was all I ever wanted in marriage. The unlovable, burdensome, and ugly man turned into mother nature’s devoted husband. I finally found love.

Ever since then, I have continued to regularly travel the country on a whim. I have chased storms in Kansas, tasted wine in California, got lost in the desert in Arizona, saw the rocky mountains for the first time, walked along both coasts, went to the beach in Florida, and so much more. I ended up driving to every state in the lower 48 that summer (took three months) AND doing something in each one.

The decision to chase my dreams saved me from ending my own life. All I had to do was see the sun.

#17

When I was 9 I loved sleeping in my older brothers water bed upstairs when he decided to live with my dad instead. One cold January night I decided against it for some reason. I ended up sleeping in my own bed downstairs. A massive earthquake hit in the middle of the night and the headboard with tons of shelves on it ended up crashing down onto my brothers water bed. I would have been seriously injured if I had been sleeping in that bed that night!

#18

I was in high school, and driving home from a robotics team party when it felt like instinct took over, and I slammed the brakes from 50 mph. A car plowed through the intersection in front of me, hit a curb, and left with a drunken weave. I realized that if I hadn’t stopped, I likely would have gotten hit. At that point I found the nearest parking lot, and had a panic attack for an hour before driving to my parents.

#19

When I was in my early 20’s I was working with a company laying deep services for new neighborhoods. In the winter, at the end of the day, the laborer crew would spend a few minutes scraping mud off the excavator tracks.

One day I was in between the two tracks scrapping away mud. Suddenly, my colleagues are shouting (almost screaming) my name. Although I didn’t see it, it instantly occurred to me that they would only be that terrified if the excavator was still in motion and I was about to be pinned between the rear counterweight and the track.

I dropped to my knees and rolled away with less than a second to spare. The rear of the excavator swung across where I had just been standing. Had I been any later, I’d have been cut in half.

The operator had thought we were done. We didn’t mention it to anyone… you know how you are at that age.

Once in a while I still think about it. Scary stuff.

#20

Nowhere near as extreme as some of these, but I used to go for walks in a nature park right behind my neighborhood, usually with headphones. On one such walk, I happened to look down to see the foot I was currently stepping with was about 6 inches from coming down on a diamondback rattlesnake. It was arched back, ready to strike, rattle going, but I couldn’t hear it over my music. Leapt back immediately and walked around it without issue, but holy c**p, it gets my heart going just thinking about it.

#21

Riding my bike from Uni in the dark, and as I passed a silouhete of a person on the edge of the path, I stood up on the pedals. They struck me with a bat, landing the blow on my biceps. I was able to keep my balance/grip on the bars and ride through it.

Staying seated on that bike would have been my face meeting that bat. Plus, who knows what to follow on tbe ground.

#22

I was caught in a bar brawl. Tumbled to the bottom of a crowd and was pressed to the floor when some psycho was on my back choking me. Couldn’t move and couldn’t breathe. I thought that was it. I was gonna die on the floor of a New Jersey nightclub. Suddenly I remembered a move my wrestling coach taught us to break grips. I found his thumb, folded it like a fist and squeezed as hard as I could. It c*****d like a stick. I could hear him scream in my ear and he hopped off. I pushed up and swung my way out. I was choked so hard that both of my eyes were full blood red, no whites and I cracked a molar. That was a close one and who knows what would have happened if I didn’t recall that one random move or if I never wrestled to begin with. Scary.

#23

Realizing that me being gone would have long-lasting effects on everyone that knew me.

At the time, I had just returned from living overseas with my parents to being back Stateside living with my brother, who was living with his wife while they were still dating.

The first month was fine, but then she started to open up about her myriad problems with me. It got to the point where we would constantly be getting into arguments. The problem was, I wasn’t working and I was only going to community college–my brother was my only option for housing; he knew that, she didn’t. But it then caused them to have arguments frequently.

I would wake up most mornings to listen to her complaining about everything to friends or family over the phone–I was sleeping on their futon in the living room.

One of these conversations, she made it clear that when they do eventually get engaged that I wouldn’t be invited to the wedding.

One morning, when both my brother and her were out of the house, I went into his closet to find his pistol. I was kneeling there staring at it for a long, long time. My body compelled me to bring the barrel up against my chin.

I never pulled the trigger. I put the gun back where I found it, called my dad in tears. To this day I never told my brother that I was on the verge of s*****e because I thought in that moment it would make things better for him to not have to worry about me, anymore.

#24

Almost went to the midnight showing of The Dark Knight in Aurora, Colorado when and where the shooting happened. Changed our minds enroute because a friend called us and we had to turn back and get them.

#25

I was driving on the highway on a dark moonless night. Suddenly with about 30 yards of distance, I saw 4 lines on the road in my headlights. I had about 1 extra second to swerve lanes after I realized it was a F*****G COW.

Saumya Ratan

Saumya is an explorer of all things beautiful, quirky, and heartwarming. With her knack for art, design, photography, fun trivia, and internet humor, she takes you on a journey through the lighter side of pop culture.