Has your life ever flashed before your eyes?

[lurker2001]

Mine has not, thankfully, and hopefully won't ever for a few decades, at least. But I have known two people that said that happened to them.

One was my buddies brother-in-law. He owns a construction company. He fell off a 3 or 4 story building and landed in a dumpster. Part of his ear got cut off. He's a total beast, played tight end in college and boxes for fun and he got lucky landing in the dumpster.

He told me that while he was in mid-air it was like watching a short movie of his life. He thought he was dead, for sure.

The other was an older guy I met once. He got in a dirt bike accident and flew through the air. He said his life flashed before his eyes and he saw the good things he did in life.

Cool story, bro.

 

[cmanole]

I call BS on those stories. I was in a real life air emergency one time and none of that happened to me. The engine sucked up a blown tire, exploded and caught fire on takeoff and we had to circle the airport and land which took 5 minutes or more. I thought bigger than chit the plane was going to crash and I was going to die. I think people whose lives flash before their eyes actually 'die' for a period of time and are brought back...

 

[FSUTribe76]

I call BS on those stories. I was in a real life air emergency one time and none of that happened to me. The engine sucked up a blown tire, exploded and caught fire on takeoff and we had to circle the airport and land which took 5 minutes or more. I thought bigger than chit the plane was going to crash and I was going to die. I think people whose lives flash before their eyes actually 'die' for a period of time and are brought back...

Yeah, there have been multiple times I nearly/should have died and not once did I have a "flashback". If there was any time of time/perception alteration it was that time seemed to slow down.

As far as my near deaths, I've talked about it before but:

1) on a trip at home from Tally to the Tampa area late at night I was zoned out not really paying attention in the left hand lane and I hit a bump in the road which was just enought to get my wheel turning towards the right hand lane as I only had one hand on the wheel and then and only then do I see a car coming straight at me due to the reflection of my lights in their headlight reflectors. Some drunk was doing 100+ with his lights out on the wrong side of the divided highway. The fact that I was already turning into the other lane and the bump snapping me back into attention is the only reason I wasn't killed in a head on accident doing 70-80 on my side and 100+ on the other. How do I know how fast he was going? This was pre-cell phone and he killed himself and a family not much further up the road before I could call 911.

2) I was fishing with friends on a railroad track overlooking a basically untapped pond (so filled with large bass) we had to hike quite a ways to and one of the dudes panicked when the train was miles down the track and knocked me off the bridge whereupon I fell about two stories directly on to the top of my head and directly on to concrete. Not only did my brain NOT split open like a ripe watermelon or have my spine or neck snapped, I wasn't even really hurt.

3) Some ridiculously young cop pulled me over after I got caught in a speed trap (that no longer exists thanks to a court case) outside of Homosassa Springs on 19. It was the day after a hurricane so the sides were flooded, so I put my hazards on and went about 30 until I could find a side road to pull off safely onto which was a fair distance. The dumba%* cop immediately bolts from his car with gun drawn and runs up and places it inches from my face (19 yo white kid in a 15 yo relatively rare car so not looking like a "known suspect"). He then holds it their screaming with his hand shaking and trigger finger literally millimetres from blowing my head off. I speak to him calmly and have to lull him into dropping his hand which he does and promptly shoots the gun into the ground. The cop was so nervous about almost killing me he just yells at me to drive slower and books it away from the site.

This three I consider definitely "almost" or "should have been" deaths. But I was also struck indirectly by Lightning when I was a rugrat of about 5 and only have a cool lightning shaped scar on my hand as a result in between my thumb and forefinger (I'd been holding an umbrella and the Lightning jumped from tree to me via the umbrella), survived a plane "hard landing" which didn't make the news but was hard enough they snapped one of the wheels (not whole assembly) off, fell from the top of an oak tree onto cattle wire and had nothing but scratches and apparently almost died of food poisoning as a tiny rugrat.

So if I was going to have flashbacks, I would have had them by now.

 

[BigHungryNole]

Yeah, there have been multiple times I nearly/should have died and not once did I have a "flashback". If there was any time of time/perception alteration it was that time seemed to slow down.

As far as my near deaths, I've talked about it before but:

1) on a trip at home from Tally to the Tampa area late at night I was zoned out not really paying attention in the left hand lane and I hit a bump in the road which was just enought to get my wheel turning towards the right hand lane as I only had one hand on the wheel and then and only then do I see a car coming straight at me due to the reflection of my lights in their headlight reflectors. Some drunk was doing 100+ with his lights out on the wrong side of the divided highway. The fact that I was already turning into the other lane and the bump snapping me back into attention is the only reason I wasn't killed in a head on accident doing 70-80 on my side and 100+ on the other. How do I know how fast he was going? This was pre-cell phone and he killed himself and a family not much further up the road before I could call 911.

2) I was fishing with friends on a railroad track overlooking a basically untapped pond (so filled with large bass) we had to hike quite a ways to and one of the dudes panicked when the train was miles down the track and knocked me off the bridge whereupon I fell about two stories directly on to the top of my head and directly on to concrete. Not only did my brain NOT split open like a ripe watermelon or have my spine or neck snapped, I wasn't even really hurt.

3) Some ridiculously young cop pulled me over after I got caught in a speed trap (that no longer exists thanks to a court case) outside of Homosassa Springs on 19. It was the day after a hurricane so the sides were flooded, so I put my hazards on and went about 30 until I could find a side road to pull off safely onto which was a fair distance. The dumba%* cop immediately bolts from his car with gun drawn and runs up and places it inches from my face (19 yo white kid in a 15 yo relatively rare car so not looking like a "known suspect"). He then holds it their screaming with his hand shaking and trigger finger literally millimetres from blowing my head off. I speak to him calmly and have to lull him into dropping his hand which he does and promptly shoots the gun into the ground. The cop was so nervous about almost killing me he just yells at me to drive slower and books it away from the site.

This three I consider definitely "almost" or "should have been" deaths. But I was also struck indirectly by Lightning when I was a rugrat of about 5 and only have a cool lightning shaped scar on my hand as a result in between my thumb and forefinger (I'd been holding an umbrella and the Lightning jumped from tree to me via the umbrella), survived a plane "hard landing" which didn't make the news but was hard enough they snapped one of the wheels (not whole assembly) off, fell from the top of an oak tree onto cattle wire and had nothing but scratches and apparently almost died of food poisoning as a tiny rugrat.

So if I was going to have flashbacks, I would have had them by now.

Sounds like a story from the final destination movies. As a PSA, can you please post your travel plans so I and others can make other arrangements?

 

[FSUTribe76]

Fortunately it's been awhile since my last near death experience. The plane flight was during law school, so it's been a decade and a half since my last.

Unless you count a couple of years ago when I was driving Tamiami Trail and a plane flew about 15 ft at most over the top of my car pointed directly at me. It was a student pilot and his instructor having to ditch on the highway. They ended up landing safely not too far behind me and I watched them land in my rear view window.

 

[vevois23]

Nope

 

[Phinhead]

Time perception slows during times of extreme stress, such as near accidents. For the most part of your day, your brain edits what you see. If it recorded everything, you would see the bounce of your step and the blur of your eyes shifting from one object to the other. For a demonstration, go to a mirror and shift your eyes from one eye to the other. You will not see a transition.

This brain "movie editing" stops when it needs you to see and process more.

 

[DanC78]

Never had my life flash before me, BUT...I have a pretty crazy story that did happen to me and my father when I was 14.

My father lived in the woods, a good 10 miles to the closest town. He was driving me to school that morning like normal. The road to leave his house is a long 2 lane highway with nothing but pine trees to the right and left (paper mill trees, you could see the perfect rows when driving fast enough). We were approaching our first stop light about 8 miles in, just a normal 2 lane intersection. My dad begins to slow down around 150-200 yards out, and almost comes to a complete stop when we are about 25-50 yards from the intersection....we got to maybe 5 or 10 mph. I wasn't sure why he was stopping so far from the stop light, but what was even more odd is that the light was green and had been green. There was no reason to slow down or stop whatsoever. I remember looking at him while still feeling half asleep and asking what he was doing. He looked at me and had no real answer, he was as confused as I was. I accelerated and drove on. We go under the intersection no problem, and then about 25-50 yards in front of us a Semi Truck (no trailer attached) swerved off his side of the road, yanked it back on to the road, crossed over into our lane, went on to the shoulder of our side of the road and destroyed a dumpster that eventually stopped him. The driver got out and said he had just dropped his trailer off and was heading home and passed out at the wheel.

We didn't think anything about it until we got back in our car and drove off. I swear to you we would have been dead if we hadn't stopped like we did! I know it's probably hard to believe, but it's 100% true. Pretty wild stuff that still gives me goose bumps when I think about it to this day.

 

[Spearchucker87]

I don’t think it really happened. But it would help to know more about what they said they were seeing. If somebody believes he saw 10,000 scenes from his life, I think it’s self-delusion of some kind. I don’t think the brain could dig up and process that much info on its own** and so fast. Maybe under hypnosis, after several sessions. What we do know for sure is that the human brain under stress has a massive capacity for memory fabrication and false memories: Note the huge discrepencies we see in eyewitness testimony.

If I’d been one of the people who had to jump from the top floors of the burning WTC, taking a number of seconds and you absolutely know you can’t save yourself, I might have watched some mental film of my life. But if I’m spinning through the air off a dirt bike or falling 3 stories, the last thing I’ll be doing is watching home movies. I’d be looking for that dumpster or watching the orientation and makeup of the terrain I’d been riding across, looking to shift my body and land as safely as possible. Phin said your brain can shift into full detail information processing mode, and I think that's what would happen.

[**If it’s not doing it on its own, if you want to say some higher power did it, that’s a different discussion. I guess I’d wonder why the higher power intervenes with a vision for that particular person. I can think of a lot of people who’ve seemingly been much more in need of a vision, a kick in the pants, a glimpse of the future that awaits them if they go wrong, etc. ]

 

[noleclone2]

Imagine that, FSUTribe has had 5 near death experiences.

 

[FSUTribe76]

I don’t think it really happened. But it would help to know more about what they said they were seeing. If somebody believes he saw 10,000 scenes from his life, I think it’s self-delusion of some kind. I don’t think the brain could dig up and process that much info on its own** and so fast. Maybe under hypnosis, after several sessions. What we do know for sure is that the human brain under stress has a massive capacity for memory fabrication and false memories: Note the huge discrepencies we see in eyewitness testimony.

If I’d been one of the people who had to jump from the top floors of the burning WTC, taking a number of seconds and you absolutely know you can’t save yourself, I might have watched some mental film of my life. But if I’m spinning through the air off a dirt bike or falling 3 stories, the last thing I’ll be doing it watching home movies. I’d be looking for that dumpster or watching the orientation and makeup of the terrain I’d been riding across, looking to shift my body and land as safely as possible. Phin said your brain can shift into full detail information processing mode, and I think that's what would happen.

[**If it’s not doing it on its own, if you want to say some higher power did it, that’s a different discussion. I guess I’d wonder why the higher power intervenes with a vision for that particular person. I can think of a lot of people who’ve seemingly been much more in need of a vision, a kick in the pants, a glimpse of the future that awaits them if they go wrong, etc. ]

Exactly. I never had a "this is your life" flashback montage, instead with the exception of the lightning strike (which just knocked me out) it was more of an augmented awareness in super slow motion. Did time literally stand still? It course not this isn't the Matrix, but it definitely seemed that way. Especially the cop with the gun, it seemed like forever that he was waving it in my face but it was probably 30 seconds to a minute or between me seeing the gun shake and his finger twitch and him ultimately pointing it down and accidentally discharging it. I can even still picture his face decades later and I've had whole girlfriends I can't remember the name or face of.

 

[KevNole]

Didn't see my life while I waa tumbling those 250' via my motorcycle wreck, but I thought I was done. Wasn't sure what had happened, then realized as I was tumbling across the pavement @ 45mph+, that maybe I waa alive and hit. Next imediate thought was, dear God. Please don't let another car hit me too.
but no life flashback. ...I do have night mares if getting hit from my motorcycle wreck occasionally.

 

[BelemNole]

No, I had someone else's life flash before my eyes. Their life wasn't any more interesting. I banged hotter chicks.

 

[More Kirk Less Spock]

Hit by a car from behind when I was a 14 year old kid, squarely in my lower back. Total surprise, pretty sure I was dying. But my life didn't flash before my eyes..mostly lots of cursing (bystandards who came to gather round the spectacle actually commented on my stream of profanity I remember).
Plenty of other close calls from a mispent youth many stupid, stupid things that could have ended it all. Also previously mentioned on this site, went surfing in hurrican driven waves (in 1989?) at Panama City Beach - totally terrifying..the downward force of the current was literally sucking my board out from under me as I tried to make it.

 

[KitingHigh]

Time perception slows during times of extreme stress, such as near accidents. For the most part of your day, your brain edits what you see. If it recorded everything, you would see the bounce of your step and the blur of your eyes shifting from one object to the other. For a demonstration, go to a mirror and shift your eyes from one eye to the other. You will not see a transition.

This brain "movie editing" stops when it needs you to see and process more.

This. I've had close calls where time slowed down and a matter of seconds felt like minutes to me. Good thing too, because the extra time gave me the abilitity to do what I needed to survive.

 

[More Kirk Less Spock]

This. I've had close calls where time slowed down and a matter of seconds felt like minutes to me. Good thing too, because the extra time gave me the abilitity to do what I needed to survive.

I saw a study done recently that said it was only the heightened emotions/intensity, but that our ability to perceive/slow time doesnt improve during stressful/life and death situations.

 

[BarryB1081]

Yeah, thought I was going to auger in when pulling off a CAS bombing run over Kuwait in 1991. Started run above smoke / cloud layer, looking to verify a MULE laser designation once I popped out underneath, and because of low altitude and angle of bombing run (spent too much time in run trying to verify the building the FAC wanted me to drop on) had to pull out of dive right to the edge of controlled flight / buffeting. Had half full drop tanks, and a 1000 lbs of ordinance that was supposed to be gone. Pulled right back into the cloud / smoke layer, got disoriented and pulled nose too high and into an aerodynamic stall with all sorts of warning lights flashing and bitching Betty giving me an earful. Had to get the nose back down and get the wings level to regain control, but this took me back below the cloud / smoke deck pointed at the ground again, only this time with much less airspeed. Leveled off at about 500 feet and started a more gentle ascent again, while waiting for an SA-7 to run up my poop shoot.

Life did not flash before my eyes; I was too busy trying to save it.

 

[DanC78]

This. I've had close calls where time slowed down and a matter of seconds felt like minutes to me. Good thing too, because the extra time gave me the abilitity to do what I needed to survive.

I've had things like this happen...I wouldn't say it felt like minutes when in actuality it was seconds, but there was a slow motion type of matrix thing going on.

Once was when I was catching a football...and I'm not even kidding. It was in a game when I was playing midget football. I remember diving out for it and then everything went silent and the ball was moving in what felt like slow motion all the way up to the point where I caught it. Then the world was back to normal.....just like you see in the movies. I can still visualize it all to this day. pretty wild

 

[seminole97]

I've had close calls where time slowed down and a matter of seconds felt like minutes to me. Good thing too, because the extra time gave me the abilitity to do what I needed to survive.

I've had those experiences in a car a few times.
The worst one I wasn't driving, gf got her car sideways on I-10 in the panhandle after a light rain. We slid across the entire median, both oncoming lanes, and came to a stop on the opposite embankment off the shoulder. Went between a van (who fortunately didn't lift while we skidded toward his lane) and a robin egg blue Caddy that was about 100 yards behind the van.

I remember while it was happening how time slowed. I could tell at the rate we were (not) slowing on the wet grass that the van was going to clip us when we got up on the road.
At the time Papyrus' PC NASCAR sim had an open beta test that allowed up to 20 racers to join. 95%+ wanted to race Talladega because you didn't have to brake, so it was easier than anywhere else and better drivers couldn't separate themselves. Invariably people wrecked in the huge drafts, as in real life, and seeing the cars sliding across the track and wondering if you would slip through was exactly what came to mind as we're sliding across the grass.
When the front tires got on the pavement of the oncoming lanes we slowed more and the van passed in front of us in his right lane before we crossed the road and came to a stop. GF burst into tears and I got out and looked to make sure all the tires were still on the rims. Drivers side was covered in mud and tall grass that blew up in our wake. Felt a little giddy, I guess from adrenaline, but there wasn't a life flashing before my eyes moment, but I had been confident a few seconds earlier we were going to be in a nasty collision.

 

[KitingHigh]

I saw a study done recently that said it was only the heightened emotions/intensity, but that our ability to perceive/slow time doesnt improve during stressful/life and death situations.

Not sure how they can study that. I don't think it happens for everyone. What I can tell you is that when it's happened to me it's like a scene from a movie where I could analyze a good number of factors and run possible courses of action through my head to determine and then execute the correct one all within seconds or fractions of seconds.

I do know that the way people perceive time differs and stress or other factors affects it. This comes into practical use in my job as navigational aids are identified at night by flashing patterns (e.g. 1 flash every 4 seconds). We always use a stopwatch and never estimate because that difference in perception can introduce error.

 

[KevNole]

Hit by a car from behind when I was a 14 year old kid, squarely in my lower back. Total surprise, pretty sure I was dying. But my life didn't flash before my eyes..mostly lots of cursing (bystandards who came to gather round the spectacle actually commented on my stream of profanity I remember).
Plenty of other close calls from a mispent youth many stupid, stupid things that could have ended it all. Also previously mentioned on this site, went surfing in hurrican driven waves (in 1989?) at Panama City Beach - totally terrifying..the downward force of the current was literally sucking my board out from under me as I tried to make it.

They said I was letting the curse words fly repeatedly, once I realized what happened, I was sooo pissed that someone had ran me over!

 

[Spearchucker87]

Exactly. I never had a "this is your life" flashback montage, instead with the exception of the lightning strike (which just knocked me out) it was more of an augmented awareness in super slow motion. Did time literally stand still? It course not this isn't the Matrix, but it definitely seemed that way. Especially the cop with the gun, it seemed like forever that he was waving it in my face but it was probably 30 seconds to a minute or between me seeing the gun shake and his finger twitch and him ultimately pointing it down and accidentally discharging it. I can even still picture his face decades later and I've had whole girlfriends I can't remember the name or face of.

About the only thing we didn't mention is that this mental ability to do the slowdown -- to shift into total data immersion / total analysis mode when facing mortal danger -- has an evolutionary advantage.

While going into memory replay mode in the manner described, would be a natural selection disadvantage. A primate being chased by a predator would be more likely to pass on traits that allowed for tracking the predators every minute movement......but the "movie reel playback" trait would be detrimental.

 

[Phinhead]

I saw a study done recently that said it was only the heightened emotions/intensity, but that our ability to perceive/slow time doesnt improve during stressful/life and death situations.

Can you remember a period in your life when, if you look back on it now, time seemed to stretch on forever? When a week seemed like four, or an hour seemed like it went on for days? What were you doing during that period?



Neuroscientist David Eagleman usedthis great example to explain how time perception works:

Yet “brain time,” as Eagleman calls it, is intrinsically subjective. “Try this exercise,” he suggests in a recent essay. “Put this book down and go look in a mirror. Now move your eyes back and forth, so that you’re looking at your left eye, then at your right eye, then at your left eye again. When your eyes shift from one position to the other, they take time to move and land on the other location. But here’s the kicker: you never see your eyes move.” There’s no evidence of any gaps in your perception—no darkened stretches like bits of blank film—yet much of what you see has been edited out. Your brain has taken a complicated scene of eyes darting back and forth and recut it as a simple one: your eyes stare straight ahead. Where did the missing moments go?

Before I explain these time-bending powers you didn’t know you had, let’s back up a bit and look at how our brains perceive time normally.


How we perceive time
Our ‘sense’ of time is unlike our other senses—i.e. taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing. With time, we don’t so much sense it as perceive it.

Essentially, our brains take a whole bunch of information from our senses and organize it in a way that makes sense to us, before we ever perceive it. So what we think is our sense of time is actually just a whole bunch of information presented to us in a particular way, as determined by our brains:

When our brains receive new information, it doesn’t necessarily come in the proper order. This information needs to be reorganized and presented to us in a form we understand. When familiar information is processed, this doesn’t take much time at all. New information, however, is a bit slower and makes time feel elongated.

Even stranger, it isn’t just a single area of the brain that controls our time perception—it’s done by a whole bunch of brain areas, unlike our common five senses, which can each be pinpointed to a single, specific area.

So here’s how that process affects the length of time we perceive:

When we receive lots of new information, it takes our brains a while to process it all. The longer this processing takes, the longer that period of time feels:

When we’re in life-threatening situations, for instance, “we remember the time as longer because we record more of the experience. Life-threatening experiences make us really pay attention, but we don’t gain superhuman powers of perception.”

 

[Phinhead]

The brain doesn't edit as much.

Most of what we see each day is edited out because we don't need it. We don't need to see the horizon dip as we walk or the blur of our eye motion. The brain literally writes the movie we need to do what we are doing, and it edits what it needs from your vision to make this happen.

 

[More Kirk Less Spock]

Can you remember a period in your life when, if you look back on it now, time seemed to stretch on forever? When a week seemed like four, or an hour seemed like it went on for days? What were you doing during that period?



Neuroscientist David Eagleman usedthis great example to explain how time perception works:

Yet “brain time,” as Eagleman calls it, is intrinsically subjective. “Try this exercise,” he suggests in a recent essay. “Put this book down and go look in a mirror. Now move your eyes back and forth, so that you’re looking at your left eye, then at your right eye, then at your left eye again. When your eyes shift from one position to the other, they take time to move and land on the other location. But here’s the kicker: you never see your eyes move.” There’s no evidence of any gaps in your perception—no darkened stretches like bits of blank film—yet much of what you see has been edited out. Your brain has taken a complicated scene of eyes darting back and forth and recut it as a simple one: your eyes stare straight ahead. Where did the missing moments go?

Before I explain these time-bending powers you didn’t know you had, let’s back up a bit and look at how our brains perceive time normally.


How we perceive time
Our ‘sense’ of time is unlike our other senses—i.e. taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing. With time, we don’t so much sense it as perceive it.

Essentially, our brains take a whole bunch of information from our senses and organize it in a way that makes sense to us, before we ever perceive it. So what we think is our sense of time is actually just a whole bunch of information presented to us in a particular way, as determined by our brains:

When our brains receive new information, it doesn’t necessarily come in the proper order. This information needs to be reorganized and presented to us in a form we understand. When familiar information is processed, this doesn’t take much time at all. New information, however, is a bit slower and makes time feel elongated.

Even stranger, it isn’t just a single area of the brain that controls our time perception—it’s done by a whole bunch of brain areas, unlike our common five senses, which can each be pinpointed to a single, specific area.

So here’s how that process affects the length of time we perceive:

When we receive lots of new information, it takes our brains a while to process it all. The longer this processing takes, the longer that period of time feels:

When we’re in life-threatening situations, for instance, “we remember the time as longer because we record more of the experience. Life-threatening experiences make us really pay attention, but we don’t gain superhuman powers of perception.”

Interesting -

When we’re in life-threatening situations, for instance, “we remember the time as longer because we record more of the experience. Life-threatening experiences make us really pay attention, but we don’t gain superhuman powers of perception.”

Perhaps another way to think about this is that we don't gain superhuman powers of perception, but rather employ what we were always capable of, but rarely utilize.