Author of the book “The Perfect Storm” talks about his near-death experience

Sebastian Junger he’s used to dodging bullets in war zones, so he didn’t expect to almost die in his own garage.

Junger was walking with his wife in the woods near their home when he suddenly felt so bad that he could barely move.

When paramedics arrived, Junger felt better and only reluctantly boarded the ambulance at his wife’s insistence.

At the hospital, doctors realized that Junger’s pancreatic artery had ruptured. It was so terrible that he needed a transfusion of about 10 liters of blood straight into his jugular.

Junger, an author and journalist, sees parallels between his own medical trauma and the death of his friend, the photojournalist Tim Hetherington who bled from shrapnel while covering the Libyan civil war.

The two men faced very different medical scenarios, but both required blood transfusions to survive. Junger received that transfusion, while Hetherington did not. He died on the way to the hospital.

Junger never thought much about donating blood before needing someone else’s blood. Now he feels that giving is a vital part of being a good citizen. “Give blood, vote and serve on a jury, and you will feel like you are part of something bigger than yourself, which is one of the best feelings a person can have,” he told CNN 🇧🇷

A near death experience

In addition to making him a supporter of blood donation, the experience also made the avowed atheist question what happens after death.

Junger’s experience was terrifying – but it is also shared by people across the world and in different cultures.

“I didn’t specifically know I was dying. But I knew I was being pulled into a black hole that was underneath – which sounds like bad news – and I didn’t want to go there,” she said.

“And that’s when my dead father loomed over me until I said, ‘Get out of here, Dad. I don’t want anything to do with you right now.’ I’m a skeptic, right? And there was my dead father welcoming me, and I don’t know why. The next day, an intensive care unit nurse tells Junger that he nearly died. The realization was surprising and, when she returned to the room, “I said: ‘I’m fine, but what you told me really scared me’”.

This nurse suggested that instead of thinking of his brush with death as frightening, he should “try to think of it as sacred.”

It was a suggestion he took to heart. The experience “left me with the thought that I’m going to keep thinking about for the rest of my life,” he said. “I’m not religious, but I understand the idea of ​​something being sacred.”

The ultimate frontline

Junger’s experience was so transformative that he is writing his next book on near-death experiences. It is still in the research phase, but the working title is “Pulse: What Keeps Us Alive and What Happens When We Die”.

“I’ve been covering front lines in war zones all my life. This was the ultimate frontline for me,” he said.

Junger says hospice nurses often report that in a person’s last days and hours, they see the dead in their room and even talk to them. The dying patient usually believes that he is being escorted by his loved one. That was the experience that Junger seemed to have with his dead father.

“This is very, very common and I’m trying to figure it out. That was incredibly traumatizing for me, but almost a kind of spiritual awakening,” said Junger.

“It didn’t make me believe in God, but it did make me think that perhaps there is more to existence, in this universe and in this life, than pure rationalists allow. Maybe there’s something a little more that we just don’t understand, and it’s waiting for us.”