What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done?

[pRICE cUBE]

What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done? This can be by choice or by circumstance, or both.

[mattkime]

Probably slapping cars that got too close while cycling in nyc. Or maybe flipping off drivers. Or maybe just cycling in traffic in nyc.

[Numo]

I’ve probably done stupider things that don't come to mind at the moment, but when I was 7 or 8 my friend and I found some old shotgun shells in his basement. We emptied the gunpowder out and used it to make a pipe bomb. Thankfully, it just fizzled out when we tried to light it.

Driving drunk also comes to mind.

[Rick-o]

Well, there was that time I drove my vehicle through Detroit!! miley-shocked003:

[Wags]

I don't know about the most dangerous but the one that sticks in my mind happened when I was a Forest Service archaeologist during a survey in the mountains on the Gifford Pinchot.

This was pre GPS and cell phones, late 80's or early 90's. I would often go out alone for the day, mostly looking at proposed timber cutting areas as part of the cultural resource management process. I had a radio but no coverage due to the mountainous terrain and I was 2 or 3 miles away from my Forest Service rig.

I was interested in a cliff line that looked good for rock shelters or caves and was crossing a talus slope to get at them when I lost my footing and began to slide down towards a drop off of several hundred feet. I went spread eagle but kept sliding down towards the cliff edge for what seemed like a long way, but was probably only about 10 or 15 feet. When I finally stopped sliding I had to carefully inch my way back up. Seemed to take forever. A few times I would move up a little then slide back down a little. I kept thinking that they'll never find my body.

[srf1957]

Drunk driving . Taping a ballbearing to the primer of a shotgunshell . Then tossing them in the air to come down on asphalt .

[RecipeForDisaster]

I’m sure there is worse, but all I can think of right now is climbing 25’ up a wet, thin hemlock tree with no ropes (in rain boots), kayaking class II rapids at flood stage in a non-whitewater boat, taking that same boat (it also was not a sea kayak) out through a confluence into the open ocean, riding any horse any time, no questions asked, as a kid, and making my F-150 max out the speedometer when I was 17 (not a closed road or anything, but nothing bad happened - not even a ticket).

I grew up in a house where we had a basement fire, which my dad tried to extinguish with Tupperware containers of water... he also mixed bleach and ammonia accidentally. And then put a running chainsaw down on his thigh "for a minute". My mom got bitten by several random dogs, strangers or her own, over the years... LOTS of ER visits for varied things. Not much seemed too crazy to me back then.

[NewtonMP2100]

.....sushi from a gas station......???

[Rolando]

Driving Drunk in my early 20s

Hanging off a railroad bridge in my teens.

Getting into fights, then getting shot at (hearing a bullet whiz by is frightening, to say the least).

Sex with a girl from Maryland!

[S. Pupp]

Walking every day on the streets of North Philadelphia in the early-mid 1990's, wearing thin-soled sneakers. They really did not provide enough protection from all the heroin needles lying in the street.