Extreme Encounters: How It Feels to Be Drowned in Quicksand, Shredded by Piranhas, Swept Up in a Tornado, and Dozens of Other Unpleasant Experiences...

by Greg Emmanuel

Brace yourself.
 
If you’re the squeamish type, turn back now. If you’re afraid of a little blood, read no further. But if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be struck by lightning, swallowed by quicksand, or stung by a jellyfish, then fasten your seatbelt and get ready for a wild ride.
 
Extreme Encounters offers blow-by-blow accounts of life’s most dangerous experiences in thrilling “you-are-there” second person—so you chill to the numbing effects of frostbite, you hear the ear-splitting roar of a tornado, and you feel the stomach-lurching drop of an elevator freefall. Full of harrowing adventure and surprising scientific insights, Extreme Encounters is a journey you’ll never forget.

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference, Science, Horror, Survival, Trivia

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Stacee]

I've had this book for a while and just found it. It was a quick read on interesting topics, but I found the narrative a bit bland.

It's written in second person, which took me a some time to get used to. However, it is a clever way to get the reader involved in what is happening. Of all of the topics covered, I've only experienced the skydiving and I didn't think the chapter came close to describing what it feels like.

In the front of every chapter, there was a sentence or two from a person who had gone through the topic. I would have liked more from those people instead of the seemingly fiction-like narrative.

[Natalie]

I really could have done without the second-person "Choose Your Own Adventure"-style narration, or the very pathetic attempts at humor that the authors attempt to inject. Aside from that, they were more or less meticulous in their research.

[Rstarin74]

Meh. How it feels to read a book that should be fascinating but isn't.

[J]

This is a book that has been laying around and so I chose to pick it up to see what it was about.

Extreme Encounters is the type of book that my past morbidly dark self would have enjoyed as a read. The reader is presented with a collection of scenarios where the author sets the reader to deal with well-known events whether as mundane as animal attacks or weather to various execution methods, medical dramas, etc. And during the telling of "each" story the cause of death or injuries is explained in detail.

In a sense the stories almost read like a Choose Your Own Adventure but without the chance to really make any decisions other than the story you are reading. In many of the stories you die, in several you survive although sometimes with effects and in a few there is no actual ends such as being shot or ending back again in quicksand but off the beaten path.

Each story starts off with a title and a quote from someone who has been through the experience. As a result it is a bit of a spoiler.

The only illustrations are included at the start of each section where a heavily colored illustration, usually in pink and black, is used. These aren't very creative (shark - animal encounters, tornado - weather & bars for crime just to name a few.

Although interesting in its own way, it just isn't a book I would read again if I have a choice.

[Justin F]

I initially read this book as a 10 year old after seeing it at Half Priced Books and begging my parents for it. I read and reread it constantly as a child, and many of the vignettes stuck with me.

I drunkenly ordered it on ebay one night three years ago when I randomly remembered one of them. I finally reread it, and the 4/5 is mainly for the nostalgia factor. A very quick and fun read though quite repetitive.

[Jeb]

If you are curious about what it's like to die in the electric chair, slowly have your brain eaten away by Mad Cow disease or suffer a horrible death from the Ebola virus then this is the book for you! The author puts you in the shoes of someone who is suffering, dying or enduring all this and more. While some of the "extreme encounters" are told in a truly harrowing way, others are a bit bland and silly.

But silliness plays a large part of what this book is about and makes the sometimes dark subject matter a bit more palatable to those with more delicate sensibilities. A fun and quick read. It's one of those books that you just breeze through during a lazy afternoon.

[Marty Greenwell]

Not a pleasant book, as intended. this describes how people die (or not): drownings, piranhas, tornados, fire ant attack,snakes, sharks, bombs, detox on your own, the bends, buried alive, acid attack, in a heavyweight fight, hanging, etc, etc. Very interesting but very gory and very brutal.

[Allison]

Well, that was a fun little 2-day binge. If you don't have interest in the whole collection, just read the one about piranhas, and maybe being buried in an avalanche.
Short stories of dozen of ways to die combined the scientific with the horrific, and left plenty of material to entertain myself with for two evenings on the couch after work. The logistics of, say, what happens when someone passes away from carbon monoxide poisoning are fascinating simply because it's impossible to experience it (and live to describe to someone else).
I do wish the author hadn't felt the need to leave a comedic one-liner at the end of each chapter, because it makes for a VERY cheesy signoff. Just leave the corpse lying there. Mom doesn't have to come over to apologize with a fruitcake you were making fun of at Thanksgiving dinner.
The 2nd-person narration blends a Choose Your Own Adventure-style tone with an Edgar A. Poe macabre, for those readers who really don't care about the mechanics of the human body. Turns out that most deaths aren't caused by anything really graphic, it's just a matter of how long it takes for the brain to be deprived of blood and/or oxygen. Shrug.

[Heenz]

This book haunted me for a decade and a half. I just thought everyone should know that. I couldn't remember anything about the book except I borrowed it in the eighth grade, and the stories about the bear attack and chinese water torture lived rent free in my head ever since.

Aside from that, very interesting read. I really enjoy the second person narrative, and it's very fun. Some of the science facts are outdated, and in a couple of spots there is outright misinformation, but I don't believe the misinformation could be construed as harmful. It's mostly just anecdotes that have been proven over time to be false. Can be quite graphic at times.

7.5/10

[Xanthi]

This book is engrossing for us who hold morbid fascination for this general topic. I expected more first hand accounts. They were minimal. What readers actually get are fictional scenarios written with a good deal of black humour and incorporating facts. Whilst these were interesting and informative enough, I still would have liked some interviews with survivors who experienced some of these extreme events and conditions.

[Raul sadok]

I'm still not sure what kind of book I've just read, as an informative book is ok but as a horror book it's pretty lousy, the stories are too short and too light with two pages per story does not give time to create tension. Also, I hate the silly jokes at the end of each story. But I like the idea of ​​relating real accidents to horror.

[H. Woodward]

Despite the subject matter and all the people lacking imagination on this review list, I loved this book. The short (2-3) page entries cover a lot of different subjects and include a fair balance of information and narrative. If you grew up on Choose Your Own Adventure books and enjoyed finding all the ways you could die in those books, this book is for you1

[Martin Gordon]

Small chapters anecdotes of suffering and occasional survival. I liked especially the last two anecdotes of the skydiving and getting launched into space. Quick easy read.

[Z]

Only a couple of chapters really grabbed me, the rest were rather superficial.

[Michelle]

Compelling stories mixed with some wry, dark observations.

[Dana Renee]

If anyone remembers that show 1000 Ways to Die from TV, this is the literary version of that. This would probably be a fascinating book for an older middle schooler/young high schooler

[Kasandra]

I expected a quick and entertaining read, and it was both, but... the 2nd-person narration falls flat, and I'd have liked actual interviews with survivors, or quoted first-hand accounts. For something that should have been way more interesting, it was actually fairly boring. Still, maybe some of it will end up making its way into some morbidly fun and gruesome poetry. We'll see. I will say, the chapter on kidney stones was accurate ("like someone is using a knife to carve you like a pumpkin from the inside".... yup.)

[Jonathan]

This book takes the reader through a range of "extreme encounters", i.e. near-death experiences. It is told in a very interesting 4th person perspective. Where this book fails to execute is the applicability factor. It just isn't interesting enough, and that is where it falls short.

[Natalie]

I found this an interesting read. Not for everyone I guess but really was interesting to know how or possibly how things would happen in different situations. If you have a slight morbid interest then you will enjoy this book

[Joe Napolitano]

Quick read, and very interesting but it could do without the second person narration. The book would be 4 maybe 5 stars if written differently. But I would still recommend reading it as a fill in on a short flight or bathroom reading

[izrtkfliers]

Read this in eighth grade, enjoyed it a lot at the time, but it's not a very deep read and it's written in second person, Choose Your Own Adventure style.

[Jenn]

Not crazy about the 2nd person narration of this book but interesting stuff that I've always wondered about.

[Rabbit {Paint me like one of your 19th century gothic heroines!}]

I really don't know what to say.

I have a lot of morbid curiosities, and this is just one of them.

This book might be disturbing, triggering, and gross to some of you.

[Joseph Hogan]

Loved it. Read it as a kid. Going to pass it on to my younger brother and my boys when they grow up!

[Angela Reeves]

yawningly boring

[Elizabeth Nesbit-comer]

now I know how it feels to drown, so cool