What was your "caught the last chopper out of 'Nam" experience?

Took an 8:00 am flight out of NYC on 9/10/01, having decided to move my flight up by a day

In 2004, I left Phoenix to go live in a homeless shelter in my home state of Connecticut while I got myself clean off meth. Almost immediately after I left, practically everyone in my social circle in Phoenix started getting arrested and doing serious time. Like, to the point where I couldn't go back to Phoenix again because most of them thought I'd snitched. I consider myself incredibly lucky. I'll be hitting 22 years clean this coming June.

Family vacation in california. As we drove, we saw some smoke in our rear view. But were glad we had beat it. We stopped at a museum to cool off and just look around. We had been there for about an hour, when we heard a siren outside. Suddenly, a person came busting through the doors and started shouting "go!! Everybody has to leave, now!!" We gathered up and headed to our cars. When we got outside, we saw that the mountain right outside the museum was ablaze. We could feel the heat blowing in. The worker at the museum was on a motorcycle, and he bailed fast. We hauled ass outta there, with a police e*****. The cop was doing 100mph, so we did too. We made it to a highway cutoff that would take us away from danger. We noticed that nobody was behind us. We were the absolute last people to be evacuated from a massive forest fire. The next year, I went back thru that area, and stopped at the museum. The museum worker was different but they knew the story. Apparently, they had closed the highway right behind us, before we got to the museum. The highway patrol never checked the museum on the initial evacuation. Luckily, a veteran came by to do a final sweep of the area and noticed our cars in the parking lot. If he had not come by, we would have been trapped and had to hunker down in the museum basement. The museum was singed, but the building survived. 5 minutes later, and our cars would have been burned out and we would have been stranded.

Not me but my Grandfather was captured by the Japanese in WW2 during the Fall of Singapore. One time, all the prisoners were lined up for a count and a Japanese soldier got to the PoW before my Grandfather, stopped counting, and said, “right you lot go that way, the rest of you stay here.” He later found out that those who were counted were sent to build the Burma Railway, or Death Railway where many PoWs did not survive the brutal conditions.

I was looking to attend a concert in Paris and saw the band playing at the theater nearby was the eagles of death metal and thought it was a stupid sounding name so I didn’t buy the tickets.

Took a trip to Russia in 1991. Got home on a Thursday, the tanks rolled into Moscow the following Monday. The end of the USSR.

Refinanced my mortgage in 2019.

Graduated before COVID

Graduating high school and college before smartphones became a thing (Facebook was around but nobody really took that many photos in the mid aughts) so all my cancellable or embarrassing actions went undocumented

Needed urgent, but not “emergency,” spine surgery because 2 discs were ruptured and pressing into my spinal cord… was supposed to be in Feb 2020, insurance delays as recommended surgery was deemed “experimental” and I went through various appeals to try and get it approved. Finally decided on the less optimal fusion option, was scheduled for Mar 19, 2020. On the 16th, surgeons office called to say hospital was stopping all non-emergency surgeries after tomorrow due to COVID ramp up, but they could squeeze me into the schedule because I was most at risk of further injury causing major complications. Had surgery, was sent home day after instead of typical 2-3 day recovery in hospital, and then spent the first few weeks of lockdown recovering from spine surgery that likely wouldn’t have taken place for another 4-6 months.

Got the last train out of Grand Central on 9/11 before everything shut down.

I was driving home from the beach and was ahead of my other two friends cars by a couple minutes. Landslide covered the highway in the time between the cars. To this day my friend insists she heard trees snapping behind us, the rest of us didnt hear anything though.

Was supposed to go cheer for a friend running 2013 Boston marathon, went to a week of Spanish school in Mexico instead.

Not me but a friend, left the Magic Lagoon in Khao Lak on the 23rd December to be back in the UK for Christmas in 2004. On Boxing Day the Indian Ocean earthquake struck triggering a devastating tsunami. An estimated 4500 people in Khao Lak died, hundreds of whom were staying at the Magic Lagoon.

Upgraded my PC before the AI bros started going after the hardware

Feb 23 1997 at the Empire State Building observation deck. The shooter started his thing at the same instant the elevator doors opened. I shoved my wife into the people trying to get off and followed her in. Pressed the button for the lobby. Bullet dodged. Mostly. Still got fired for giving a rival TV network an interview. Note to self and others, if you work for The WB don’t be giving interviews to Fox. Fireable offense.

was waiting at the marathon finish line but then left quickly to visit the bathroom. 10 minutes later I hear an explosion and there were just screams everywhere. I almost became a victim of 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing attack.

The line at my local burrito shop got super long after I arrived.

Went camping for Labor Day, Left at noon on Monday. 3pm Monday they closed the park and evacuated due to a wildfire in the area. By Tuesday morning, the campground was on fire.

I flew back from Mexico 3 days before they closed the border and stopped flights due to COVID.

Last year I was at a street festival in my neighbourhood, wandered around grabbed some treats, there was one last street that I decided to skip and went home to take a shower. I got out of the shower to missed calls and texts from friends because a van had been driven full speed through the street of people.  It was the Lapu Lapu Day festival in Vancouver and 11 people died, countless others injured. My bus stop I usually took to work became a memorial site, even a year later there’s still marks from all the memorial candles melting onto the sidewalks. We’re coming up on a year soon and the vibes in the neighbourhood are getting solemn again. 

I moved states when I was 16. Before I moved, all my close friends were selling weed. We spent a lot of time hanging out at the local meth house, where we could smoke cigarettes and weed inside. I was always riding along when my best friend sold. This is a big city in California, so besides the typical high school kids, we were selling to Nortenos and Surrenos, mostly youngins but a few older (to us) guys, too. After I moved, shit got a lot more serious. My best friend got into meth and was selling meth and robbing people. My other friend got pretty big time with weed, the kind of dealer that sells to other dealers. I kept smoking weed and occasionally doing other drugs, but made more friends who had life goals.  The friend who got into meth ended up getting off meth, but he kept selling weed and then coke until he had a really close call with some bad dudes and got out. He's a baker now at a grocery store. The other dude ended up selling coke kind of big time, and the last time I saw him he pulled out a giant rock of coke. All I could think of was how poorly "I'm just visiting a childhood friend" would play out if the cops busted his door down. He ended up doing some time for some shit and then I lost track of him, but my guess would be prison.  I'm a successful engineer now. Moving forced me to reset my life and I got away from a life that was headed no where good.

Bought a house in 2018

Left a party early because I was tired… found out it got raided 30 minutes later.

We went on a cross country road trip across New Years and wanted to include the Grand Canyon. We bailed hustled out of the Meteor Crater because the weather was turning ugly. We hit snow at Flagstaff. We crawled through the city and when it got to our exit to turn North, the semis were parking on the off ramps to ride out the storm. There were two semis between us and freedom. My husband told me to drive around the semis on the shoulder. I put our brand new Forester in deep snow mode and drove between the semis and the guard rail with only inches between my mirror and the trucks. I was convinced I was going to scratch the car on either the semi or the guard rail. I was able to get on the highway headed north. We drove through blizzard conditions passing a couple of abandoned cars and a rescue from a spun out car in the ditch in progress. When we pulled into our hotel, we got the emergency alert on our phones that they closed the highway behind us. The next morning social media was full of accounts of people pooping in McDonald's cups because they couldn't get out of their cars during the storm. We were inches from that being us with two 5 year olds in the car.

I had detention in Jr high so I had to stay one hour late and take the "late bus" back  home in southeast LA  county from West LA.  This bus had to make tons of stops along the entire way to drop off everyone that was bussed to school.  Turns out we passed only a couple of miles away and minutes from the start of the LA riots were we would've been sitting ducks for an angry mob 

Leaving Woodstock 99 as the fires burned behind me…

Not me, but my dad. He was on a business trip. It didn't go well, so he scheduled a flight back a half-day early. This was before cell-phones so he didn't call. The flight he was supposed to be on crashed with no survivors. We found out about that plane crash about 20 minutes before my dad walked in the door. Mom was starting to freak out but trying to keep it cool for us kids and then dad walked in the front door and asked what was wrong. Honestly, my parents didn't have a great relationship and that was the last time I remember my mom being excitedly happy to see my father.

I got swept up and got a government job during the COVID surge and while I wouldn't have gotten this job without a pandemic. I mean I'm pretty good at my job now but like if I tried getting it now there's like no chance.

January 23 2020 I woke up in Shenzen and found out Wuhan was in lockdown quarantine. I was on a work trip, and decided to cut it short and leave to Hong Kong.

In Bahamas docked on a cruise. Happened to catch wind just before COVID and flew out like 2 days before they shut shit down hard. Ship may have made it back with no issues. Never knew. But some didn't.

My mom picked me up from day care ~30 minutes before my day care was destroyed by a tornado. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_outbreak_of_August_24%2C_2006

yeah well… fully armed US military e***** out of our UN compound to an air field. got air lifted out in a pave lowe massive helicopter with other apache gunships buzzing around. somali war between the ousted president’s tribe and others was escalating badly. saw our compound wall smashed with armed fighters swarming it as we flew by

My wedding was March 7, 2020. We saw a news report about COVID-19 being reported in the US but by the next week everything was shut down. Thankfully was able to have everyone fly in and out without any issues but my friends who were supposed to get married the week after had to cancel and wait 2 years to celebrate.

Put solar on my roof 12 years ago.

I volunteered for a mission to Baghdad because they had a Burger King, got blown up by 3 IEDs on the way back on MSR Tampa.

Was late to work picking up a coworker. As I was pulling up to the office, swat was literally kicking in the door. I kept driving.

In 2017 I walked out of the movie theater cause I found the film boring. Incidentally a fire broke out there and about 40 of the 70 people in that room didnt survive as the exit was blocked

Bought a house in 2018 right before the housing market started exploding.

Got sober before I overdosed and died

Saw the warning signs and dipped out of mortgages/real estate in 2007 and went to grad school. Whew. Then got my student loans forgiven under PSLF during the Biden admin, extra whew.

I was at the end of an awesome road trip in Mexico with friends. I didn’t think to bring my passport with me. I really wanted to camp on the beach one more night, but one girl in the group had a really bad feeling about it and said “I just really feel like we need to be back in the US before we go to sleep tonight”. That was September 10th 2001. I’m grateful for that girl’s intuition.

Retired 12 months before AI decimated my sector.

Got a flight out of the Hong Kong airport in 2019 during the protests. Right after I took off the protestors rushed the terminal and they had to shut down the airport, a lot of people got stuck. [https://www.npr.org/2019/08/12/750404354/thousands-of-protesters-storm-hong-kong-airport-shutting-down-flights](https://www.npr.org/2019/08/12/750404354/thousands-of-protesters-storm-hong-kong-airport-shutting-down-flights)

Started dating my now wife right before the dating apps exploded.

This is minor but 3 weeks ago I filled up most of my gas tank 30 minutes before I saw the prices all jump up. Was kinda surreal

Australian Millenial here, my lease weas due on my one bedroom unit, girlfriend at the time was wanting to move in so I decided to rent a bigger place. One of the houses I looked at was also for sale so did the math and it was cheaper to buy than rent. Managed to push through a home loan with some number fiddling from my boss at the time (nothing illegal, just restructuring my wages and stuff). Got it pushed through, bought a 3 bedroom double brick house with a seperate entertainment room out the back for $154k. This was March 2009 and was literally the bottom of the housing market crash here in Australia. I just so happened to have everything aligned in such a way that it all fell together at the last time in history housing was actually affordable for anyone. Prices everywhere started going up literally 2 weeks after I bought it, now its worth well over $500k. If I had to buy my own house today I couldnt afford it, shits ridiculous and out of control.

During my second to last class in grad school, we got an email from a professor who suspected AI use. I’m so glad that I finished grad school before AI became ubiquitous

graduated hs the year before COVID hit

I was stationed in South Korea from Mar ‘19 - Mar ‘20. We started hearing rumors about a potential stop movement order being issued due to COVID, so I asked my flight chief if I could move my flights up a week to get out of there sooner. He said he didn’t care so that’s what I did. I was going home to Florida to spend what was supposed to be 10 days of leave with my wife between two overseas tours, then PCSing to Germany. I took the bus from my base up to the main air base north of us and while waiting in the passenger terminal to board the flight, the stop movement was announced. We were the last flight out before it was enforced. I got home to Florida and my new flight chief in Germany reached out and let me know that he had no idea when I’d be able to travel to Germany, so I was “stuck” home in Florida for the foreseeable future. I wound up getting to spend almost 75 days hanging out with family on the beach before going to Germany with my wife. Kicker is a coworker in Korea who had the same follow-on assignment to Germany as I did decided not to move her flights up. She got stuck in Korea while I was in Florida and we wound up arriving in Germany a day apart.

Mine was the last boat out of Zanzibar, two years ago I went to Tanzania and hiked Kilamanjaro with a group of uni students, after we finished we went over to Zanzibar to spend a week on the beach. Last night there we asked our local Tanzanian travel guide called Oscar to organise paddle boarding but as there was about 30 of us he had to get them off loads of different paddleboard hire places, I ended up being given this completely transparent plastic one, couple hours later the guy who gave me my paddleboard turned up at our hotel saying there was a crack in it and that he wanted a new one, now we where ramming into each other or it might have already been cracked so whatever I offered to get it fixed and offered him £100 but no he wanted a £1000 that I sure as shit wasn’t giving him, not like I had it anyway being a student. Next morning we all get in the coach, get to the ferry port and start going through customs and bag checks, these two boarder patrol/police guys suddenly drag me out of the queue, march me off to their office, where there is police, the paddleboard owner and a couple other people. They ask for my passport, Oscar arrived and starts talking to them in Tanzanian, turns out the guy has made a complaint and wants to sue me and black me from leaving Zanzibar. This was at 4pm, last boat off Zanzibar was at 6pm, for 1h55min Oscar keeps assuring me that he will fix it, don’t worry, he’s got this. All of a sudden he tells me echos me to stand up, snatches my passport out of the custom guys hand, pushes me out of the door and says f****** run for the boat, so that’s what I f****** did. Literally ran flat out, jumped over a fence, saw a ferry and just f****** jumped on it as it was taking off, had no idea if it was the right ferry, no idea where my original ferry was meant to be heading to, or where anyone else from my group was. Managed to text my gf asking her to ring the British embassy with a 50 word explanation before I lost signal, didn’t have a clue if I was going to be arrested once we arrived back in Tanzania, or what happened to Oscar. By some miracle I arrived at the right destination and found my group waiting for me on the other side, they had no clue what happened to me, apparently they didn’t even realise I got taken until they were on the ferry, and then when it arrived they got a call saying Oscar got arrested. Got back to the UK without issue after, although I was panicking like f*** at the airport thinking I’m going to get detained at any moment, Oscar got released after a day in jail and apparently just paid for the paddleboard but never so much as asked me to pay a part towards it.

My department was starting to go down the shitter. I made a lateral move to the shock of management. The department has taken an absolute nosedive since and my coworkers are all wanting my current position next time there’s an open spot. I got out when I saw warning signs before everything hit the fan and if I waited it would have been a much harder time to get my current role with a larger pool of internal candidates.

Instead of going to an outlet mall and later a regular shopping mall to look for a friend's birthday gift, I decided to take an extra shift my job needed covered. Found out at least 6 people were killed in a shooting at the outlet mall and later that day there was mass panic event at the shopping mall around the times I would have been there.

Took Airborne Aviation helicopter tour of Kauai last week. Heli crashed yesterday.

Led a pretty uneventful life. By contrast, my Dad in WW2: Thrown in the air by German bomb in the Blitz. Charged by 3 African buffalo in Kenya. Escaped by jumping into dry riverbed. Was in Royal Signals. Travelled by himself between HQs in Burma. Left a small camp that was wiped out by Japanese few hours later. Plus a few more. Eventful I guess you'd say

My dad was supposed to go on a humanitarian mission. My mom gave him hell because he was about to miss my sister's graduation, so he didn't go. A friend of him took his spot on that mission, a young mother who needed some time on her own. The plane crashed, almost everyone died, including her.

Built an absolutely godlike gaming PC the week before RAM prices began to spike.

Bought a house in 2016. In the following two years our house shot up 200k for literally no reason. Had we waited even like six months to buy a house we'd probably still be living in an apartment to this day. We could not afford the house we currently live in if we were to buy it today even though we make like 2-3x as much as we did 10 years ago.  We also refinanced the house in late 2021 so we are basically boomers at this point with our good financial timing. 

Not last flight. But twice, I had left a city while on a holiday and 5 days later both got hit by rare earthquake events with casualties. Twice in a row. Lucky the third city I visited and left is earthquake free for now.

Forever home under contract when Covid broke out. 2.75% and my home value is up 60% at least

Our local maternity ward announced they were shutting forever on December 20th. Any babies born before that would be catered to, anyone not in active labor on the 20th would be sent to a different hospital. Our kid was due on the 22nd, arrived on the 18th. It’s a shame and it came as a surprise to a lot of folks in the area, a lot of us had kids born in that hospital and/or were born there ourselves. Even the obstetricians and midwives were caught off guard by the announcement.

Arrived in Taiwan on one of the last flights to land before foreigners were barred from entry due to COVID. Taiwan was a great place to weather the storm, being one of the few countries to handle the situation competently.

I dropped off my high school prom date with her friends and they were all going camping for the weekend by the lake and were going to drink alot. I had martial arts classes to teach the next day so I didn't go. The next week none of them showed up to class. The cops had busted everyone at the lake and there were narcotics involved too. Most got misdemeanors since they were 18 and 2 got felony possession. I had pancakes at IHOP with some firefighters that night.

March 2020 leaving Nairobi to return to Canada. First flight was canceled. Had to scramble for the one we got on. Not ‘nam, but was still stressful!

Went to see a show by a friend in South of Market. When we got back to the car, someone was waiting for our spot. Barely 45 minutes or so later the World Series Earthquake happened. Later I saw that the brick wall next to our car had collapsed and buried the car that was waiting.......

I graduate from high school in 2003, right when security was becoming a concern but before technology really became integral in education. I wish my kids didn’t have school iPads. But they’ve given me some good tips on how to circumvent my work’s content filter.

Just barely missed being an ipad baby

Took a flight out of Moscow the day of a blizzard. Our plane was de-iced and in a brief break in the weather we were cleared to take off. We were the second flight cleared and as we approached the end of the runway our plane lost traction and started to slide. The airport was shutdown due to the icing on the runway. I don't remember how many days the airport was closed, but at least a few.

Bought my first car before COVID, had it delivered 9 days later, another week and it was lockdown time. Delivery times dilated. A friend bought a similar car a couple months later and had to wait for over a yer before the delivery. Also price car exploded since.

I left houston about a chin hair in front of Harvey. I was going to ride it out but the day before it made landfall I got a nagging feeling I should go to San Antonio. Traffic was bad but we made it home a few hours before the flooding and landfall. The house in Houston I lived in at the time flooded to the second floor and was under water for 4 days. 

We purchased a house and land package. Builder seemed reputable, had every faith things would go well. Moved into completed house in December 2024. Had a few minor defects but got confirmation from an independent inspector that house was at a good standard. Builder closed down in May 2025. We felt lucky that we got the independent inspection done, because other customers didn’t and had no chance to claim any building defects or rectification requirements.

Chat GPT released 5 months after i graduated. I've never had to prove something i made wasn't done by AI

Left China, Wuhan, one monthe before the Covid epidemic. Left Palestine 15 days befor3 the last war started.

I got on the Jolly Green Giant out of Saigon about 4 hours before it (and the rest of RVN) fell. Does that count? It's not quite the very last chopper...

I left New York City before covid hit

Walked by the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh like 3 minutes before it got shot up with an ensuing manhunt.

When I landed at Newark I had half a dozen texts asking me if I was ok. Got out of Mumbai hours before the terrorist attacks.

Dating. I got out of the dating game just before Tinder and the apps really took off. When I hear my friends talk about their dating lives now, it just seems super complicated.

Wife was finishing an exchange semester in egypt just before covid. Had a weird feeling about it and pushed her to come back asap. She did and weeks later the world closed down