How close have you come to death?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

A recurring Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.

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Recorded Hamza Yassin said elsewhere, not written here
Being about nine metres away from a polar bear. In northern Canada, a young polar bear was very intrigued by our food. I was flying the drone at the time and the polar bear looked up and started paying attention, so then we flew the drone further away and he followed it while we got into our vehicles.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 30 September 2023 source ↗

Others on this question

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Rose McGowan American actress and activist
Falling down a mine shaft in New Mexico while filming.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 8 December 2018 source ↗
Tess Daly English television presenter
On a motorway three years ago. An HGV hadn’t seen me and pulled out. My father-in-law’s a truck driver and he said black cars are not very visible. I don’t drive them any more.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 December 2016 source ↗
Diana Athill Editor and memoirist
So, when many years later I really was near death as a result of a haemorrhage after a miscarriage, and heard a doctor saying “She’s very near collapse – call the lab and tell him to run” and understood that the “him” was the person fetching the blood they were going to pump into me, I was not in the least alarmed as I dimly wondered if I had the strength left to think some suitable Last Thought, concluded that I hadn’t, and said to myself the words: “Oh well, if I die I die.” I was sure, then, that nothingness was just that.
Recorded The Guardian, 23 September 2014 source ↗
Bernadine Evaristo English author and academic
Travelling Europe with a friend, when I was 29. She was driving and the brakes went, on one of those vertiginous Italian mountains. It was terrifying for the 20 minutes it took to coast down the mountain.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 July 2020 source ↗

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