Question: what is the most life threatening that has ever happend to you?

Jon Copley answered on 24 Jun 2010:

When doing science, I’m glad to say nothing really life-threatening has happened to me. I once got hit by a big wave that came over the rail of a ship during some choppy weather, but I was fine (didn’t get washed overboard!). And although there is some risk involved in diving in minisubmarines, the crew are superb professionals who are trained to deal with it, so it’s really no more risky than flying in an aeroplane or driving in a car. Same goes for scuba diving, where you manage the risk yourself. People do have accidents, but often when you read diving accident reports, you see that they did something that they didn’t really think through beforehand.

So the most life-threatening things that have happened to me have been outside science. I was in a car crash once that was pretty nasty, and could have been much worse (I hit my head, and I honestly don’t remember much about what happened, but I did have to be resuscitated mouth-to-mouth, so I guess I stopped breathing for a bit).

And I was nearly crushed by a barrel of cider falling from a stack in the warehouse of the cider brewery where I worked for a year. That was entirely my fault, because I decided to try to take the barrel down without going to get someone with a fork lift truck. A little GCSE physics should have told me what a stupid idea that was: the barrel had a mass of more than 135 kg (about twice my mass). Accelerating over even just a couple of metres under gravity once I’d dislodged it, that made for a lot of momentum (no way I’d be able to catch it!). So as I tried to deflect it, it pushed me flat onto the floor, which knocked me out for a few moments. Fortunately the barrel didn’t land on top of me, otherwise I wouldn’t be here today. A very, very stupid thing to have done!