What scares you?

I'm with you on deep water. Years back I went snorkeling in the Caribbean, they took us out over a shipwreck that was over 100 feet down, but we could see it clear as day. Weirded me right TF out, I did not like that.

I read a comment from a Navy vet, that a ship he was on stopped over the Mariana Trench to let them swim. Can you imagine? Talk about nightmare fuel.

My biggest irrational fear would be enclosed spaces. I've watched enough caving disaster videos to know to NEVER step foot in or dive in a cave. One night I watched a video on the Nutty Putty cave and couldn't sleep after.

 

I have no desire to do cave diving but I did go diving in the big blue hole in Belize. Hit a max depth of 135 feet even though I'm (or was) open water certified and not meant to be at that depth. It was a really cool experience. I think I'm too stupid to be afraid of deep water

 

My bizarre, unnatural fear is ants - and when you live beachside in Florida, you're going to have problems with ants because the entire peninsula is one giant ant colony.

Anyway, my deep fear of ants comes from the odd idea that I will fall down on my back porch, bang my head on something and die...and my family will find me dead and covered in ants. I suppose if I'm dead this is a non-issue, but still.

 

LOVE Archer!

 

An idiot with real power can scare me.

More primal is my fear of lightning. I grew up in Florida and when I was about 10, a kid on our swim team was killed by lightning. (In his yard a few blocks from us). I also had a close call with my siblings at the beach. Lighting strike, we were not directly hit, but it did knock us to the ground. Since those events, I feel very uncomfortable outdoors with lightning near by. Since I boat and golf quite a bit, I get humbled by fear more often than I would like.

 

Understandable. Had a close call at age 16 or so (oddly was getting ready to go swimming) and my friend and I had pulled up into the parking lot of where her dad had his architectural firm, and the grounds had a pool for the renters - it was a funky place in the Jungle Prada area of St. Pete. As we were getting ready to go through the gate, all I heard was the crack of lightning, saw a quick flash of light, and got sprayed by debris from a tree that had been struck about 10' away from where I was standing. Oddly, there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

At a different job I had from 2017-2019, I was working on the beach as a supervisor. Was sitting in my car across from the Beach Patrol HQs and saw lightning come down and hit the hotel next door. The lightning was so intense along with the thunder following closely behind, it felt like a hot current was running through my body and I wondered if I was having a heart attack. That was almost scarier than the Jungle Prada episode.

 

The lightning talk caused me to think of something else. Not really afraid of it, but have much more respect for the destructive power of it after the experience. I think most living things are afraid of it - fire.

I was on the way to work one morning and a tanker truck had overturned after crossing an overpass, getting onto the entrance ramp. Northbound lanes were shut down and I didn't understand why because that section of interstate was about 8 lanes wide, with emergency lanes on both sides. I was in the far lane on the southbound side when I passed but could feel the searing heat through the windows as I passed before I went under the bridge. I would have never expected that much heat from that distance. Easy to see how large fires can rage out of control - I felt like anything closer would have risked spontaneous combustion

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_51qgfMXKNI

 

I'm deathly afraid of spiders. Arachnophobia really fucked me up.

 

Hey, Hey...relax man. Just remember.....they only want to crawl across your face while you sleep. It'll be okay!

 

I always heard they like to crawl into your mouth because it's warm and moist (giggity). There is a statistic about how many spiders the average person eats per year while sleeping - not sure if it's true

 

Actually, lightning is another one that freaks me out. I've had a few close strikes while camping over the years.

Probably around 2010, my ex and I were hosting an annual group camping trip that ran from ~2000 until 2014. It was raining all day and the whole group was huddled under a big teepee shaped shelter we had borrowed from her dad.

Things picked up, and we had lightning strike within a mile 3 times within about a minute. I said we should all go sit in our cars, which wasn't necessarily safe, but better than standing in wet grass in a tent with a giant metal rod in the middle.

Things cleared up, but I was spooked by the sound coming from the west. Rolling thunder, or like a train. I sat in the car flipping stations looking for a weather report. Finally heard that we were in for 70MPH straight line winds, and a tornado was S/W of us heading east.

I decided we should bail. Surrounded by trees, no shelter, it seemed like we'd be better off ditching camp. We headed north to get away from the tornado, and then west to get through the storm as quickly as possible.

Passing through the gravel forest roads, lightning hit so close to the 4Runner everyone behind us thought it hit us. I just remember blinding light and instant thunder!

We wound up at a wayside in Jump River. Everyone pretty much resumed drinking and BS, but I was still freaking out. We got off pretty easy, though. There was a down tree or two on the way back to camp, but no real damage to our gear.

Funny how some of the scariest experiences end up being some of the best memories.