When I was a junior in high school, a senior got a nice kickback that
sent a 4 foot long piece of 3x3 stock into his chest like a javelin.
Bruised his sternum and knocked him about 4 feet back. Dude had a 65
inch chest, so this was no willowy kid.

I had already had a few kickback experiences before that happened. The
first one occured when I was in junior high school screwing around with
my old mans table saw. I was pulling something through the back side
with the blade guard off when it twisted and threw my finger into the
blade. I cut halfway through the first digit of my left hand middle
finger. It was cut exactly halfway through and if the blade had been any
higher than a half inch above the thickness of the stock, I would have
lost the entire tip of the finger, which incidentally would have made my
index finger, middle finger, and ring finger all exactly the same
legnth, lol.

The other one happened my freshman year of HS when I got a kickback on
the big old 12 inch RAS. Somehow it managed to kickback away from me and
flew into the wall behind the RAS snapping off the wooden fence and
makign a hell of a boom.