There is nothing that makes you appreciate life more and understand the true strength of the human body and spirit than hearing about someone’s near-death experience. This is why Avengers star Jeremy Renner‘s story of his own near-death experience is so moving and touching for so many people, including Joe Rogan. ‘Hawkeye’ joined the UFC commentator on episode #2312 of the latter’s podcast, where he spoke about being crushed by a massive snowplow two years ago.

The fateful incident took place on New Year’s Day in 2023, when he was hosting his family. The family was having fun, playing games, hanging out together, when the Oscar-nominated actor went out of his home. Things quickly took a horrifying turn as a snowplow slid towards his nephew, which would have killed him. Seeing his nephew’s life in danger, the California resident jumped into action and tried to board the snowplow to stop it.

However, unfortunately, the Hollywood star got caught on the massive tracks of the snow plow while trying to board it. The ‘Hurt Locker’ star would recall hearing his body, including his skull, getting crushed, which nearly killed him. Thankfully, he survived and was rushed to a hospital where he started his long road to recovery, which he described to Rogan in depth on their podcast episode. And as you can imagine, the UFC commentator was left in awe of the whole story, and took to his Instagram account to encourage fans to buy Renner’s newly-released memoir titled ‘My Next Breath.’

“@jeremyrenner almost lost his life in a freak snowcat accident, and his story of recovery and how it changed his perspective is one of the most inspirational conversations I’ve ever had. Episode available now on @spotify and everywhere else, and his book “My Next Breath” is out now,” Rogan wrote on Instagram.

Indeed, Renner goes into depth about the horrific details of the accident in his book, ‘My Next Breath’, which is on sale right now. But for those who aren’t big on reading, luckily, ‘The Bourne Legacy’ star did share all the gory details on the episode with Rogan. Disclaimer: The details are pretty nauseating and not for the faint-hearted, so read on at your own peril.

Jeremy Renner saw his popped-out eye on the ground with his other eye during the horrific accident

“It was New Year’s Day 2023. And I host my family at my house up there… but we had a big kind of snowageddon type snow event. So I decided need to clear the roads and see come out for air essentially, and in doing so, that’s when the accident sort of transpired… It was a lot of extra snow… so I had to try to dig all that stuff out using the snowcat… It’s like a tank, it’s probably, I don’t know, 12 feet wide– the tracks on each side, so it spins like a tank… It’s about like 16,000 lbs or so,” Renner told Rogan.

The house in question is Renner’s home atop a mountain top near Lake Tahoe, where he invites his family every year post-Christmas, to go skiing and things like that. But the snow-in was particularly bad that year, which compelled Renner to use the heavy-duty, 16k-pound snowcat to try and clear the snow. However, as he was operating the huge machine, something unexpected happened.

“It [the snow plow] threw me off, and it was going towards my nephew,” Renner continued. “So I had to jump back on and try to stop it from killing him because it was going to crush him between a truck and the big blade… So my instinct was to jump back on it and try to stop it, you know.”

Noble and brave as that decision might have been, that was the worst mistake Renner would make in his life.

“Obviously it didn’t work out and it got ran over… I leap up and over to try to grab onto it and got sucked under the whole thing… So there’s like a set of wheels that turn these tracks you see, and there’s like six wheels, so it undulates. So I felt all the undulation, the first one was the worst, like the pressure and skull crush and all that stuff,” he said to a horrified Rogan.

“It’s everything [was broken], it’s like, it’s 38 broken bones and eyeballs out. It was like a lot of ribs and all my spinal fractures and my legs– all my joints were broken. All my ankles, my knees, none of my spine [was broken] and I only got a laceration of my liver from like one of the ribs breaking in a couple spots and it went down and kind of stabbed it but it didn’t really mess it up too bad,” he said stoically.

Thankfully, none of his organs were damaged too badly, and his spine was also spared, saving him from becoming a paraplegic for the rest of his life. As you can imagine, seeing one of your eyes with your other eye would have been a life-altering experience, upon which most would have died of sheer shock.

But Renner is clearly made of sterner stuff, and kept his cool until he was air-lifted to a hospital, where the doctors were able to save him and he eventually made a full recovery, even if he has a lot more titanium in his body to make up for his crushed bones. What do you think about Jeremy Renner’s nauseating accident that nearly took his life?