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The writer and journalist Sebastian Youngers had his share of close calls.

He was almost hit by the first rounds of a long burst of bullets in Afghanistan. Working as a climber for a tree company, he forgot to unlock the carabiner in his safety line. Younger begins his latest book with another close call. He was surfing off the East Coast in the dead of winter.

And I was out there by myself in a day that was way overhead.

10, 12, 14 feet, I mean, big, big, sir, from a storm that had passed offshore. And I was by myself,

and they were breaking with this just incredible violence that I later realized was a result of the winter sandbars being shaped differently than the summer sandbars. They come up more steeply.

The waves are more concave. They're more hollow. The hydraulics are way more vicious.

I didn't know all of this. I also didn't know that you can't hold your breath for as long in cold

water. And this huge set came through. It darkened as it came, advancing with the slow

determination of something designed to kill you.

More peaks were lined up behind it like the ranks of an advancing army.

If the waves were starting to steepen that far out, they were true monsters,

and I didn't know whether to paddle like crazy and try to get over them before they broke,

or just stay put and

take my beating. I stopped paddling and sat on my board to calm myself before they hit. On the

lead wave came, towering, reaching, and finally detonating right in front of me, the worst possible place.

I was beyond all human intervention.

I took one last breath, slipped off my board, and dove for the bottom.

It hit me with a force that I'd never experienced.

It just pinned me to the sandbar under 15 feet of water.

It's like getting hit by a car.

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