There are times in life where you just have to take a risk. Whether it's by leaving a dead-end job to chase your dreams, or talking to that person you have always liked but never had the guts to speak to, if you never take a chance you may end up with a life that's a lot less interesting than you hoped. The thing is, we are kind of hard-wired to avoid these kind of situations. Certain hormones are released in response to fear by the adrenal glands as part of our fight-or-flight mechanism. This often factors into how we over-think situations and get stressed out in modern life, but at its heart the idea is for our bodies to be wary and ready for danger. At least, in most walks of life, that's true. Some people have incredibly dangerous jobs where their lives are put at risk on a regular basis. Humans are pretty good at adapting, so in the same way as you might get used to any profession, some people don't bat an eye at conditions like this. Case in point - the scientist who got way too close to lava just to get a sample. The footage was captured during Richard Hammond's Journey to the Centre of the Planet, a two-part nature documentary that investigated exactly how the Earth works. Richard Hammond, the English presenter best known for co-hosting Top Gear from 2002 until 2015 with Jeremy Clarkson and James May, explored where volcanoes come from and why earthquakes happen in the first episode, titled The Centre of the Planet. In this video, one particular scientist with nerves of steel approached a lava lake seeking to get a sample of the molten rock, much to the dismay of the crew, who were watching from a safe distance. Located at in Africa's Great Rift Valley, Mount Nyiragongo is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, and not something you want to get too close to. You can hear Dr Dario Tedesco, from the University of Naples, one of the world's leading authorities on the volcano, trying to alert the scientist that their life is at risk to little success. Nyiragongo's lava can flow at a stunning 60 miles per hour, faster than any other lava in the world. [[youtubewidget||https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egEGaBXG3Kg]] Their suit deflects some of the heat, but there's not much to do when the lava eventually overflows the crater. Things start to get tense as the lava near to the rim starts to boil and become more erratic. Luckily the scientist gets away in time, but within a few minutes, the area they were in is a site of a lava overflow that could have spelled their doom. The video, which has by now amassed over 8.5 million views, drew a variety of replies from commenters. One wrote that "He did it for SCIENCE. It was a necessary risk", while another joked that "Things people will do for a selfie these days". Whether this scientist is brave or stupid is up to you to decide, but we can all agree he was lucky to get out of the situation unharmed.

If there's one thing I'm never going to try in my life, it's caving.

Now, I can't say that the hobby was particularly high on my 'to-do list' to begin with - but after watching this video of a cave dweller finding himself in an incredibly tight predicament, I can safely say that you'll never see me with a rope around my waist descending into the abyss.

YouTubers Caveman Hikes - also known as the uncle and nephew duo of Jacob and Calvin Sanders - have amassed over 290,000 subscribers and millions of views thanks to their videos on caving - which is defined as the recreational pastime of exploring wild cave systems. However, after watching a few of his videos, I can honestly say that I am struggling to find the "recreational" part of that.

One video in particular on the Caveman Hikes' channel shows the moment the Sanders find themselves in a real-life nightmare situation, as they squeeze and meander through the incredibly tight spaces of a previously unventured cave system, as they map out the interior.  Check it out below:

The video is titled 'The worst claustrophobic caving you will ever see' - and it certainly lives up to that title. In fact, after amassing more than 16 million views on the platform, people flooded the comments section with their very visceral reactions to just watching the duo navigate the cave.

"I am seriously claustrophobic, and only made it about 5 minutes into this video before a panic attack started. I am amazed you guys can do this without losing it," one person commented.

A second YouTube user added they they were "unable to breathe while watching this", with a third adding: "It's crazy how y'all are able to do it! I am so claustrophobic I got an anxiety attack just watching you".

"Watching this makes my heart rate go nuts," a fourth added. "I don't know how anyone can do this."

In the video description, the pair explain that "this video is only for entertainment purposes" and that nobody should "attempt any of the actions portrayed by Caveman Hikes."

These guys are extremely experienced cave dwellers -- leave it to the experts.

Back in 2022, Jacob told The Guardian that he was "terrified" when he first started exploring caves.

In fact, he relayed a story in which he was forced to strip down to just his underwear just so he could squeeze through an incredibly tight gap - leaving him with cuts and grazes on his torso.

"I was covered in blood and scratches from the cave walls," Jacob recalled. "And my belt loop got stuck. And I couldn’t really breathe. So I had to take my belt off. And then my pants got stuck, so I literally started to take off my pants and everything."

Nevertheless, his fascination with caves continues, and the trust he puts in his uncle is second-to-none.

"Caves will always surprise me," he told the publication. "Is it going to be wet? Is it going to be dry? Is it going to be cold, dirty, muddy, clean? Is it going to be, like, pretty or is it going to be super ugly, you know, like a crawly cave that’s all spiky?"

Fortunately, I'll never know. As I'm quite happy sitting on my sofa and eating Doritos.

Featured image credit: Handout/Getty

There's no doubt that we are currently living in very difficult times. Nuclear war and climate change are now very real threats and it seems like with each day, there is a real danger of the world as we know it being destroyed. Whether it is the flexing of nuclear muscles by Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, or the constant barrage of natural disasters, the world is certainly going through a difficult period. Over the last week, we have seen two earthquakes hit Mexico, causing huge amounts of destruction and killing more than 200 people in the country's capital. On top of this, there has been two more tremors felt in New Zealand, with the damage (thankfully) being significantly less than what happened in South America. However, Ekbal Hussain, who is a research scientist at the University of Leeds has called for calm, saying that the freak incidents should be treated as coincidental. He said: "We should not be worried, earthquakes are random. The increasing concern for us is that big cities that are growing in earthquake-prone regions. "We can't stop earthquakes, but we can understand how buildings and people respond to them. Particularly in central Asia, where there are huge mega-cities with populations of more than 10 million people. When you get a big earthquake in those regions it can cause a lot of damage and kill a lot of people." "From an engineer's point of view, we understand how to live with earthquakes pretty well. They are good at designing buildings and bridges to withstand shaking. "We don't need to predict earthquakes to live with them. We need to have proper governance, proper building plans and proper risk management in place. Then we can live with them. "Japan has more than 600 earthquakes every year and very few people die in them. That's mainly because they have good plans, good buildings and good governance in place. If you have 600 earthquakes in places that don't have that, that's when many die, and they don't need to." Mexico resides on one of the most active plate boundaries in the world and The British Geological Survey has found that there have been 20 earthquakes in the past 10 years that have had a magnitude of 6.5 or above within 20 km of Mexico City. Ekbal claims that the earthquakes in New Zealand and Mexico were random as they both sit on different plates, so the release of seismic energy at the same time is purely a matter of coincidence. "When this tension reaches critical point, it releases all that energy in what we know as an earthquake," Ekbal explained. "We don't like the word predictions because it has all manner of negative connotations, but we are comfortable with the word forecasting and early warnings." Yet according to Ekbal, once place that should be concerned about the threat of an Earthquake is Los Angeles: "The Americans are very concerned about the San Andreas fault because a large portion of it, particularly to the south, near Los Angeles, hasn't ruptured in quite a long time. "We don't like to use the word overdue, but there hasn't been one there in a long time, and it's due to rupture soon." "There is going to be an earthquake there soon, we don't know when. Obviously, people in America are very concerned and what makes LA more vulnerable is that it sits on loose sediment, and most of the city is built on this. In an earthquake, like sand, it increases the shaking of a building. "They have strict building codes and they are aware of the problem, and hopefully they are preparing for it, because it could happen. "It could happen today, tomorrow, 10 years from now, 50 years from now. We just know that the energy is being stored along the fault and it must be released, you can't not release it. "They are sitting on a loaded spring, waiting to go." While an earthquake in Los Angeles is seemingly inevitable, lets just hope it doesn't cause the same amount of destruction as we have seen in Mexico over the past few days.

If you've ever been unfortunate enough to find yourself smack in the middle of a full-blown earthquake, you'll be well aware of just how terrifying it is. Most of the time, you have a split second to make a snap decision on what to do, and where you are in that crucial moment can mean life or death. Most people who have experienced this sort of natural disaster tend to be on land; I know that when I found myself in a large-scale earthquake, I summoned my movie knowledge, moving away from streetlights and utility wires and heading straight for open space. But what if you can't do any of these things? What if you had no option but to stay where you were? What if you were trapped underwater?  We got the answer to our question when a group of divers captured a terrifying video of the earth shaking underwater during an earthquake in the Philippines back in April. The divers involved were conducting a technical training exercise in shallow waters near Mabini, Batangas in the Philippines, when a 5.7-magnitude earthquake hit earlier in the year. Uploaded to Facebook by Jan Paul Rodriguez, the nightmarish footage shows the seabed moving up and down and objects in the water violently shifting about, while the divers helplessly swim. In addition, sand and bubbles are seen rising from the bottom of the sea while fish dart around in the debris. [[youtubewidget||https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNu1nN5RGq0]] Thankfully, none of the divers were hurt and they were able to call off the exercise and leave the sea uninjured. However, the video exemplifies the ferocious wrath of Mother Nature and the idea that, once a natural disaster is on course, there is no avoiding it. Speaking about the incident, Rodriguez told Newsflare: "The dive was planned for 42 meters and 20 mins bottom time, during our descent we encountered the underwater quake. It felt like there was a huge propeller of a big boat turning around directly above us, we heard underwater the trembling of rocks under the ground and we felt the shock wave, it hurt our ears, feeling heavy breathing and sudden changes in pressure. The seabed pumped up and down immediately followed by a strong shaking of the ground and the small rocks falling.” The earthquake was one of several that occurred in the area back in April and was later dubbed as being a part of the "earthquake swarm" - an event where a local area experiences sequences of many earthquakes striking in a relatively short period of time - that took place in the Philippines. Renato Solidum Jr, the concurrent director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs), described an "earthquake swarm" as being "a series of quakes without a distinct or significantly large earthquake." Explaining the science of the situation, he said: "The fault has no surface manifestation. It’s moving gradually. It’s better that way – that it moves slowly – because it would be more destructive if it moves abruptly." Although in the end it was better to have many small earthquakes rather than one big one, it meant that the natural disaster went on for an excruciatingly long time. The earthquakes persisted in the Philippines from early April until mid-August, affecting the country's Batanga province and other nearby areas. But fortunately, according to reports, in spite of the force of the continuous earthquakes, the natural disaster only managed to injure six people. With never-ending earthquakes and several tropical storms, 2017 was a tough year for the Philippines. Hopefully, 2018 will be a safer one.

Every day, almost all of us come into close contact with things that could potentially kill or seriously injure us. We cross streets loaded with speeding vehicles, use tools and appliances that could explode with just one poorly-timed power surge, and eat food from stores and restaurants that we just have to trust have been properly prepared. Thankfully, the vast majority of the time we're totally fine, and any occasional mishap that does happen to someone will be so rare that we can safely label it as no more than a freak accident. And yet, these sorts of accidents do happen from time to time - often in the ways we'd least expect. Here are 14 examples of people who managed to escape extreme disasters by the skin of their teeth, and lived to reap the rewards of sharing their cool photos on the internet for all to see.

1. Good thing this guy darted out of the way in time

2. Any faster and he'd have gone into the ditch

3. This is why you always wear gloves

4. Three inches further over and someone would have lost their head

5. This guy had his phone in his pocket when a chainsaw hit it

6. Thank goodness the windshield didn't shatter

7. This truck was nearly pushed into the ocean by a mudslide

8. I'm bowled over by how close this was

9. Saved by the skin of his... foot

10. Sometimes sharks do a "test bite" to see if something is worth eating

11. This kid nearly got battered

12. Remember you always used to complain about safety goggles at school?

13. These coins stopped a bullet during WWI

14. This would have been a gore-y way to go

While it's unlikely that any of us are going to encounter a shark or accidentally brush up against a chainsaw anytime soon, a lot of the other examples on this list could easily happen while you're just driving along the highway or walking through your backyard. Thankfully, though, these guys all had a lucky escape.

If there's one universal marker of doing something stupid, it's got to be jumping off a cliff. It's dangerous, it's pointless, and - let's be real here - you've got to be pretty damn reckless to want to give it a go. But, as we all know, human beings can be kinda dumb sometimes. I mean, how many of us have injured ourselves while trying to impress someone, or because we've had a bit too much to drink? It's no surprise, then, that people do jump off cliffs. 'Tombstoning' is the name of a trend whereby people throw themselves off cliffs or high objects into the waters below. It has been known to cause fatalities and serious injuries in the past, but that doesn't seem to have put anyone off. Especially not this guy: The unknown man received a significant amount of internet attention earlier this year when footage of him plummetting off a cliff was posted to YouTube. However, the stunt, which took place in Germany, was not shared because of how daring it was, or even how cool it looked. Instead, this guy received his five minutes of fame in the same way that a lot of people do: by injuring himself. The clip, which is only seven seconds long, shows the anonymous "daredevil" taking a running leap off the rocky cliff face before falling 50 feet down towards the sea - and straight onto a boat carrying at least a dozen people. In the description of the video, the jumper says, "50 foot [descent] onto boat coming out of cave. So wild. Glad that I survived, I was rewarded with an extended trip, but it was in a hospital. Hopeful that this will go viral. Respect the send." He adds, somewhat comically, "The landing can be judged freely." It is clear from the clip that the cliff-jumper does actually land in the water, but a distinct cracking noise can be heard as his arm makes contact with the passenger boat. [[youtubewidget||https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHMklzJrq4k]] Further down the comment chain of the video, he reassures people that nobody else was injured in the incident, and the only damage he sustained was a broken arm. "Everyone involved is a-ok," he said. "None of the passengers were injured, and just my left arm was broken ... It was a simple mistake that almost killed me." When the video first surfaced, some people were dubious as to whether or not the jumper had actually intended to hit the boat, but he has since insisted that it was pure coincidence. "Sometimes things happen that you don't expect," he said. "This is what happens when you slip up and don't take care. I got so lucky. Also, I drank heavily the night before, and I do think that carrying over affected my judgment." Let this be a lesson to everyone out there: don't go chucking yourself off of high cliffs - especially when you don't know what's currently in the water below. This guy was lucky to escape with just a broken bone, and everyone else on board the boat was even luckier to have not been injured at all.