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Dangerous games you played as a kid

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FreeMufasa

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We used to have a lot of these but 2 come to mind immediately.

The first game was an evolution of a classic, where 2/3/4 people are on swings going opposite directions and someone has to run through the middle without getting clobbered. As we got older getting pushed over just didn't provide an adrenaline rush. A friend suggested we go to a busy-ish road. The new game was to run across the road with your eyes closed and make it across safely. Using only your ears as guidance. I got clipped and someone else got hit breaking his leg. It got pretty big, was put on local news and named "Death Rush" lol. Teachers started giving talks during assembly so we eventually stopped. Think this was around 1998.

Second game took place on a building site near our school. We all climbed over and set obstacles people had to race through (some on bikes). Although no-one got hurt here, looking back this was proper stupid. We were running on beams where a slip could lead to a 10 metre drop.

Do you guys have any? Dares don't count.
 
Lawn darts. The natural evolution of the game was to see how far straight up you could throw it, and then the realization that it's coming back down.

295px-Lawndarts.jpg
 
i played the make-your-friends-pass-out game in my early teens, apparently that was pretty dangerous. it was like an early form of getting high.
 
It wasn't me that played this, but my gram told me about how when she was younger, the neighborhood kids would all get together and one person would stand feet apart, and the other would try to not hit their feet by throwing knives at the ground.
 
Dodge The Bullet


Dude#1 has a .22 caliber handgun

Dude#1 is blindfolded and stands at a line/marker (crack in the pavement, chalk line, whatever)

Dude#2 stands five feet away but directly in front of him at his own line/marker

Dude#1 is spun around 10 times by Dude#3 who is standing behind him

Dude#3 counts off each time a circle is complete, with the end goal being 10 circles

At the completion of the 10th and last turn, Dude#1 aims straight ahead and pulls the trigger

Dude#2 must stand at his line up until count 9, then he can run in any direction to get the hell out of dodge

Dude#1 NEVER ends up shooting straight ahead because he's completely dizzy and that's where the fun comes into play




RIP Tony
The first and last guy to lose a game of Dodge The Bullet
 
Man, kids can be really messed up.

I remember there was supposedly this popular game of chicken going around our school that involved self-mutilation, until teachers put a stop to it.
 
War in the woods with bb guns.

All out fighting in pitch dark room with anyone you happen to come in contact with.
 
Not that dangerous, but our elementary school had one thing that I think we called "Free Slide" where like a dozen kids at once would bumrush the twirly slide and rush down it all at once and clog it up. The teachers hated it and I'm surprised nobody got hurt doing it.
 
When I was like 8 or 9, me and my friends played this game where we'd individually go into this dude's house who was supposedly on the family watch dog list and see who could go the longest without getting caught. Only one of us ever got caught, he never wanted to talk about it though.
 
British Bulldog was awesome. So many kids got injured when we played that one lol.

Also there was this circular thing on the playground that spins (it's in the jungle gym and you can hang on to it) and we would spin it as fast as we could and make people jump onto it as it spun.

That shit sent people flying all sorts of directions.
 
We would use our bikes and use them to jump of ramps and ledges (like 5ft ledges). That and racing our bikes in the street and rounding corners not giving a fuck. No one ever was hurt from that though.

I also remember when I was about 8 and my brother was 5 or 6 we would steal (well borrow because we always put it back) this old man's bamboo and we would play Star Wars with them. I was Vader, he was Obi Wan. He did end up getting hurt(not majorly, just a welt and some crying) playing that unfortunately. I feel bad about it typing this, but we both have agreed that it was fun at the time.
 
There were some houses being built near where I lived and we used to go onto the construction site and play in them. They made the perfect place to play war games but looking back I'm suprised no one was hurt.
 
My parents screwed up and gave me a real chemistry set with real chemicals. Yes I am aware that all chemistry sets have chemicals but this one was from my grandfather who was a chemist for the air force so I got the works with a never ending supply of ingredients. After almost burning the house down for the third time my parents decided to push me towards a different hobby that was much safer for them and the house... programming.

As far as games go, I grew up next to a mountain, there were houses on the other side of it towards the top and so we used to build karts take them to the top and ride them all the way down like speed demons.
 
I played "tag" in a friends pool with a golf ball. That did not end well, but in hindsight I'm amazed how long the game lasted until someone got pretty fucked up. (head shot...hard. The kid had golf ball dimples on his forehead for 24 hours.)
 
In mexico my grandparents and a huge and very mean brahma bull. My sister and I(I bet we were about 8 and 7 years old) used to sit on the rock wall to the corral and throw rocks at it until it got really really really mad. Then we would jump into the corral and the game was to be able to climb back out before the bull gored us in a fit of rage.

My god we were stupid. I wonder how we survived.
 
Bottle rocket fights....surprised no one lost an eye doing that. Hell, I did that in college. Not smart, but really fun.

I remember having 4 people on each end of a street, all with all sorts of bottle rockets, roman candles, etc. All firing at each other.
 
Slapping game? You have to slap yourself, each turn escalating the power of the slap more than your opponents last slap. I've also done it where you slap each other. Bruises and drawn blood were pretty common.

Not really that dangerous, but it's the only game outside of contact football with no pads that I played as a kid that could cause consistent bodily harm.
 
I got an exacto knife kit when I was 12 and a soldering iron at 13 as christmas and birthday gifts. I cut myself numerous amounts of times and I melted through all my toys and my sisters. Love my dad.
 
No specific game but when we were kids we would load up on arms (real bow and arrow, pump-action bb gun, black cat firecrackers) and just head out into the tick filled woods like it didn't matter. No phone, no gps, just a clubhouse and tons of dangerous things getting detroyed. I am amazed no one ever got hurt badly.
 
'there's no such thing as a cliff'.

you played it by saying 'there's no such thing as a cliff' while walking off a cliff.

thankfully we were smart enough to usually only play it in winter.
 
The old stand-by, "Whack eachother with sticks and pretend they're swords". If you didn't parry correctly, you got a big stick whacked upside your head. Shocked no one ever got a concussion.
 
Hall of kicks. Ten kids sit on desks either side, making a hallway. Every kid has to kick as hard as they can. One kid has to run inbetween all of the kids on the desks.

It was really dumb.
 
brucewaynegretzky said:
Shoot fireworks at target X. Blow up random thing Y.

Those are the two big ones.
Click to expand...

Yep. Fun as hell, but very dangerous. Consequently, we also played with a lot of fire.
Had a incinerator we tossed all kinds of shit in. How it never blew up is beyond me.

Once had a sword fight with fluorescent light tubes. You can guess how well this went.

Playing hide-and-seek in the pitch-black night. Nearly busted my head open on concrete.

Setting off (or messing with) Dry-Ice Bombs. I knew how to handle the shit at least. Everyone else was exceptionally hit-or miss.

Deified Data said:
The old stand-by, "Whack eachother with sticks and pretend they're swords". If you didn't parry correctly, you got a big stick whacked upside your head. Shocked no one ever got a concussion.
Click to expand...

We did this a lot. Also HURT a lot. I usually got my revenge. :D
 
Laser tag, w/o lasers.. we used BB guns and lined our jackets with sheet aluminum. Street hockey, tackle football, butts up, capture the flag ...
 
Well.

Our main playground was a one square mile abandoned russian military base, with half of it still "intact" (empty buildings, lot of rubbish), the other half being nature's take on everything, with a lot of bushes, trees, etc.

Looking back, there were places where we ran around very, very fast, Enslaved-style over cement-blocks, and the thing that was really interesting is that we got every single block-piece memorized. A few were moving once someone jumped on them, and if someone was to jump on one unexpectedly, he/she would have almost died hitting concrete with head or other body pieces.

I had an amazing agility and dexterity NEVER falling there. Never. We were training, running, scouting around without ever breaking anything, but all there was were cement, concrete, rusty metal-pieces...damn.

Also, I always climbed the weirdest trees, no matter how fragile it looked. Some might think it was sheer dumbness, but I could always tell whether it is safe or not. In my childhood, I fell from trees a total 2 times, both was because I started by "jumping" on the first branch, and that caused it to break. Every other time (99,999% of times :P), I climbed up properly, up till the highest points (sometimes 30+ meters), never falling, never having an issue.

Also, once two wild dogs joined us. We fed them for weeks, and every time we left the house, the dogs appeared after a whistle. Fun fact - and very scary thing- : that one dog was little, other was grown-up, and after a few days, the grown-up started attacking the little one..and then we got scared of that one. Then he started attacking other kids, and that is when we freaked out so much that we ran from him and climbed to a tree, staying up there till he went away... now THAT was scary. The dog disappeared a few days later. :(

Looking back all this, I was never in real danger, but if I were dumb, I could have easily got myself killed by a fall, or a dog, or something similar. If I were a parent, I am sure as hell would not let my kids do something similar. Because if they are just a little less agile and lucky than I was, it is a recipe for disaster....

Not like it is possible anymore, the whole place got cleaned up a few years ago, and now a lot of houses are build on the site, it is all clean and safe now.
 
We use to load rotten apples onto the back of my grandma's work truck and take them out to the cows. After we emptied it we would get onto the tail and have someone start doing donuts, hit speeds of 40 or so and then attempt to knock the other off. I flew like 20 feet into the hay and lost my glasses.

There was also a excess dump for minerals next to the farm, so rocks, bricks, wood, anything really. We would go onto these big hills made from bricks and slide down on planks. My uncle fell of a 15 foot drop while sledding. The whole place was covered in snow, so we thought it would be fun.

You do a lot of stupid things on a farm in the name of fun... Like trying to ride bulls after watching The Cowboy Way.

Also Hide and Seek Tag in the dark, in the barn.
 
In middle school we decided american football had too many rules and that rugby was too boring so we melded the two and came up with a game called "hold the ball and try to get to the other side before someone fucking kills you". The rules were simple, get to the other side before someone fucking kills you. We played it until the school banned it after one too many serious injury. Man I loved gunning for the kids I hated and leveling them with a good clothesline or spear.
 
Deified Data said:
The old stand-by, "Whack eachother with sticks and pretend they're swords". If you didn't parry correctly, you got a big stick whacked upside your head. Shocked no one ever got a concussion.
Click to expand...
Heck yes. Only, we got broomstick handles, cut them down into swords (still had blunt tips) and we would hit each other with those. So much fun!


Living in Texas also supplies you with ample, dry ground. Nothing better than having a good, old fashioned dirt clod fight.
The best one I ever had was the day when two friends, my brother, and I found this undeveloped land behind a sub division where people dumped their junk. There was a really high dirt high and a slightly smaller dirt hill with trees sprinkled about. We built quick forts from the leftover junk lying around like an empty stove, washing machine, tables, and so forth. We must have played out there for hours, and we had cuts and bruises galore. So worth it, though.
 
Norml said:
War in the woods with bb guns.
Click to expand...

Wow I remember that one. There were about 7 of us, no teams and only trees for cover. My brother got me just below my left eye. After that we moved from humans to targets.
 
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