• Question: What was the scariest moment of your life?

    Asked by mercedes03 to Donna, Jo, Mark, Stuart, timcraggs on 23 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Joanna Buckley

      Joanna Buckley answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      I was on holiday, Mercedes, and I went for a swim in the sea. I love swimming and usually swim between coves (my dream is to swim the channel!). I was swimming along and then I noticed a jellyfish. I swam past it, taking care not to disturb it and I saw another… and another… and another… and another.

      I’d found myself in a swarm of jellyfish. I had three choices.

      1. I could turn back but I’d have to swim through the ones I’d already passed and I was far out to sea at this point.

      2. I could swim as fast as I could through them so I’d not spend as much time amongst them

      3. I could swim carefully past them

      I chose number 2. I swam as fast as I could until I got clear of them. I have no idea how lucky I was not to get a single sting but if you’re stung many times, you’ll find it difficult to swim so it was pretty scary at the time.

      I stick to swimming in pools now 🙂

    • Photo: Donna MacCallum

      Donna MacCallum answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      One of the scariest moments of my live was when I was involved in a car crash when I was much younger – I woke up to find that a friend had driven into a bridge – we were all OK though!

      Another was when I woke up in hospital, having collapsed in the lab and smacked my head off of an incubator handle. I had no idea how I got there! I was kept in overnight (due to concussion) and had to get a CT scan to make sure that my brain was “normal”. I don’t even remember being in the ambulance.

      What’s your scariest moment?

    • Photo: Mark Lancaster

      Mark Lancaster answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Mmm – good one – in science it was when there was a bit of a misunderstanding about turning on one of our detectors when it wasn’t safe to do so – the beams in the accelerator were not stable and were all over the shop – had the beam hit the detector with the voltage on it would have destroyed it and then the work of hundreds of people over a decade would have been ruined – that was scary. Luckily the beams magically stabilised before all the volts were on the detector and all was well….you need a bit of luck in science too

    • Photo: Tim Craggs

      Tim Craggs answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      I think it might have been when I was run over by a Safeways’ lorry. That was pretty scary. It was also pretty scary abseiling down the side of a huge sky scraper for charity. That scared me a lot.

Comments