Survival stories
doubledragon
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in Sports Talk
Been wanting to do this thread for a while now, I've always been amazed by stories of survival, I'll add on to this thread when I get a chance. RIP to the souls that didn't make it. 🙏
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We'll start off here, it's amazing this young lady survived the first 40 seconds of this ordeal.
Juliane Koepcke’s Fall from the Sky, 1971
After graduating from high school in Lima, Peru, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke boarded a flight with her mother to the remote Panguana biological station, founded by her parents. Lightning struck the plane in mid-air, breaking it apart. Koepcke survived a fall of almost 10,000 feet, still strapped to her seat. After the crash, she spent 11 days alone in the Peruvian rainforest.
Koepcke made her way through the sodden jungle with a broken collarbone and a wounded arm. She was ravaged by insect bites and developed a maggot infestation. After eleven days of searching for help she finally came upon logging camp, where workers there gave her first aid. They transported her to a village and airlifted her to a hospital. Once healed, Koepcke—the only survivor of the accident—helped search parties locate the crash site and recover victims’ bodies, including her mother’s remains.
it is unbelievable that someone could survive a fall from 10.000 feet.
I can barely survive it when I fall off my front steps when it is slippery out.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
It's an insane story, Werner Herzog tells her story in his 1998 documentary Wings of Hope. Incredibly, Herzog had escaped the same accident; he intended to take the flight but changed his plans at the last minute. As she made her way through the rainforest, she had lost her glasses and couldn't see very well, she kept running into the bodies of the other passengers, and she found a gasoline can and poured some of the gas in the maggots in her arm to kill them, a dreadful experience. This is a photo of her visiting some of the wreckage in I believe 1998.
this will be difficult to top
https://allthatsinteresting.com/aron-ralston
you'll never be able to outrun a bad diet
That scene in the movie - you know the one, involving the nerve - is one of the few movie scenes that makes me turn away.
Jim
Yes, galaxy is referring to Aron Ralston, in 2003 Ralston was canyoneering, when a boulder chalked his arm against the wall. Aron spent 5 days trapped, he ran out of water on the second and drank his urine after. Later he broke his arm bones, made a tourniquet, and cut his arm off with a 2 inch Swiss army knife to free himself from a slow agonizing death. He wrote a book about his ordeal.
I recall a few such stories.
One is the story of a Japanese solider who was stationed on a remote island in the Pacific at the close of WWII. He remained on the island refusing to surrender for about 30 years after the war ended. He did not believe the war had ended and he continue to perform his duty (by avoiding contact with others and resisting the "enemy"). When he encountered other persons from time to time and was told that the war was over he did not believe them. He finally came out of hiding and surrendered in or around 1975 when his commanding officer was transported to the island, went into the jungle and ordered the solider to surrender. Hiding on a remote island for about 30 years would require some serious survival skills.
Another is the story of a person who was in an aircraft (military I think) flying over a remote mountainous area in Russia during a winter storm at night. The plane failed and as a result the person had to jump from the plane. Due to the storm the plane was flying through the person ended up being buffeted up and down and from side to side for 45 minutes. It was so cold that the person's eyelids froze shut. Eventually the person descended to the ground. His parachute did not open. Thus you would think he died upon impact. Not so. Apparently he landed on the steeply sloped side of a high mountain. The side of the mountain had been buried in a deep layer of freshly fallen snow. The combination of the deep snow and the steep slope cushioned the person's landing on earth. Upon hitting the slope the person did not stop falling. He continued his fall downward, however the speed of his fall slowly decreased as a result of the deep snow he was in and the steep slope he was descending. The person tumbled over and over during his descent down the slope suffering multiple injuries, including broken bones. During his descent down the steep slope he did not impact a tree or a boulder that was large enough to completely stop his descent. Eventually his downward momentum stopped and he came to rest in newly fallen snow. He survived the failure of the plane, his 45 minute free fall, his impact on the steep mountain slope and his descent down the mountain side. He was eventually found, rescued, treated and nursed back to health.
Another story is the one about the South American soccer team that was flying over the Andes mountains in the early 1970s when the plane crashed in a high mountain valley during a winter storm. Many of the people on the plane died on impact, but many also survived the crash. Some died days or weeks after the crash. Others who survived the crash ended up resorting feeding on the flesh of the persons who died to avoid starvation. One soccer player who appeared to be injured during the crash recovered sufficiently after the crash. He walked/climbed through the mountains from the crash site (at over 18,000 feet) down out of the high mountains to find someone who could help. He was found by some herders at a remote meadow just below the snowline. The herders took him into a small town where authorities were notified. He then joined helicopter rescue teams to fly into the mountains (with him being a guide in the air to retrace the route he took down from the crash site). As a result of his efforts, about 15-20 other survivors were found and rescued. This story has been told in one or more books, has been made into one or more movies and is retold every 10 years or so in the global media.
Surviving the fall is amazing in itself, but the survival in a rainforest for 11 days is also quite amazing.
I've read stories and watched videos about folks not acclimated to it, trying to survive in a rainforest. There are so many life threatening dangers, many ya might not think about.
She is extremely fortunate to have found that logging camp. I doubt if she would have lasted too much longer.
I recently watched the movie "Jungle", starring that dude from Harry Potter, anyway it's the true story about the Yossi Ghinsburg expedition in which a conman guide led three young inexperienced men into the Amazon rainforest on promises of finding an ancient city, anyway the expidition goes haywire when one of the young men develops trench foot and they decide to split up into groups of two and go separate ways. Yossi Ghinsburg ends up getting separated from his partner and spends three weeks alone, wandering around in the Amazon. The stuff he has to endure is terrifying, especially at night time when predators come out in search of food, he comes face to face with a Jaguar one night, that would have been horrifying. He wakes up one night and his entire body is covered in termites, and they've bitten him all over his body. There's a lot of ways to die in the jungle, they still don't know what happened to Percy Fawcett and his son, they both disappeared in the Amazon in the early 1900s. The jungle will eat you up and spit you out, very scary place, especially at night.
This is the real Yossi Ghinsburg after being rescued from three weeks in the Amazon.
The worst situation of all is actually the humans who live there in the rainforest. Yes, they still live in a prehistoric manner, but they can shoot an arrow and throw a spear with deadly accuracy. Generally they don't take kindly to any other human entering their domain.
There are stories about entire logging camps being slaughtered by them, and their killing methods are not always humane. If they had seen that poor girl, I shudder to think what she would have went thru before they butchered her.
One thing folks may not think of is you are constantly wet from the moist atmosphere. Imagine being in wet clothes 24 hours a day with no change of clothes possible. The human body doesn't react well to that. You mentioned insects that are most attracted to that situation, including ants, mosquitos, and other nasties. To them you are a smorgasbord.
The rainforest is an interesting place to visit under armed, supervised, experienced protection and guidance. But stranded there is a nightmare beyond belief.
No doubt about it, the tribes that live deep in the Amazon are savages, I've heard stories of cannibalism, and outright murder, they don't take kindly to outsiders invading their home. As a matter of fact, I believe that is what happened to Percy Fawcett and his son, they were exploring deep into the Amazon looking for the lost city of Eldorado, and I believe this was their third trip into the Amazon, and they were going into parts where hostile tribes were known to live. I believe they ran into one of these tribes and the tribe simply killed them. A movie was made about the Percy Fawcett expeditions and is actually portrayed in the movie that they were killed by a hostile tribe. I've always wanted to go explore the Amazon, or the Congo, they're fascinating places, full of mystique, but just too dangerous for me. There are spiders called birdeaters as big as dinner plates in the rainforest, poisonous snakes that you can't see until they're right on top of you, mosquitos with malaria. I wouldn't go unless I had an army with me, with lots of guns, and of course the proper food, supplies, and medicine.
Look at this, Goliath bird eater spider that is native to the South American rainforests.
I've never been very fond of spiders, no thank you.
I agree with ya, that is what likely happened to Percy Fawcett and his son. Frankly, it seems to me that they should have known better, and their ignorance cost them their lives.
Perhaps they had met some of these prehistoric inhabitants before, and they were friendly. So they figured that they're all friendly. Well it was a fatal error in judgment.
Some of the tribes in the Amazon are friendly, they did in fact meet with some friendly tribes, and these friendly tribes warned them about the hostile tribes. Percy Fawcett became absolutely obsessed with trying to find the lost city, and sadly it cost him and his son their lives.
If you've seen the 1993 movie "Alive', then you can never forget this story.
On October 13, 1972, a small plane carrying members of a Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes after the pilot misjudged their location. Twenty-nine of the 45 passengers and crew survived—but, alone in the brutal cold at 11,500 feet, they had no means to call for rescue. The plane’s white fuselage blended into the snow, making it invisible to possible rescuers flying overhead. For the next two months, the survivors remained at the crash site and forced themselves to eat the frozen flesh of the dead passengers.
Two rugby players, Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, eventually went for help. Despite being weakened by cold and starvation, they managed to hike to a lower altitude and spotted a farmer across a stream. They told the villagers where they had come from by securing notes to a rock and tossing it across the water. By the time their harrowing experience ended 72 days after the crash, 16 survivors remained alive. Their ordeal became known as the “Miracle of the Andes,” and produced a bestselling book and movie "Alive."
These are actual photos from the miracle in the Andes.
You had mentioned jaguars before. Actually from what I've read, jaguars are of little threat to humans in the rainforest. Cats are highly intelligent, don't generally view humans as a food source, and these particular cats prefer to stay away from a creature like a human that they're not familiar with. Obviously there are some exceptions about cats throughout the world depending on the circumstances, but these jaguars in the rainforest are not one of them.
One of the most dangerous apex animals in the rainforest is the black caiman. They know that the other animals need to come to the river for water, and just sit and wait for a meal to come their way. They will attack anything that moves.
Very interesting, I did not know that about Jaguars. These big cats have a very intimidating look, take the lynx for example, can you imagine coming face to face with this? I'd crap my pants!
Our next story is that of Ernest Shackleton and his Endurance expedition to try and cross Antarctica, in my opinion it is the greatest survival story of all-time, simply because of what they went through, how things just kept getting worse, and the amount of time they spent in this pure hell. I don't even know how to explain this story, the best I can offer is the suggestion that you take the time to watch "The Endurance" and "Chasing Shackleton."
"The Endurance" is the story of Shackleton's expedition narrated by Liam Neeson, and "Chasing Shackleton" is a documentary about six men who try to recreate what Shackleton went through, to see if they can take the suffering that Shackleton and his men had to endure.
Another good documentary about the Shackleton Endurance expedition.
I remember this - near Moab in the Canyonlands NP, so close to town and campgrounds in CNP yet so far........
Basically if ya see something like this in the wild, do not run. It may trigger their instinct to attack, as prey animals normally run to escape their predators.
Make yourself look big such as spreading your arms, and make some loud noises, but don't move towards the animal and threaten it. The animal will normally back away. This basic strategy works with most carnivorous animals in our hemisphere.
An exception is the brown bear, IE grizzly bear, also the polar bear. If ya meet one of those in the wild without carrying at least a .357, and they show aggression towards you, then you're screwed.
Not sure in this lynx resides in our hemisphere or not?
I recall reading about this many years ago. One very important lesson to be learned from this is never do anything like this alone. I'm not into hiking, but I've fished and hunted countless times, sometimes in kinda remote areas whereby there was a lot of walking involved to get to the preferred area. I have never done this alone, always with at least one buddy and usually two or three.
But if I was in this predicament, I wouldn't have had the stones to do what he did. I woulda just waited for help, and hope that it came. And if it didn't, then it didn't. My luck anyway, I'd cut my arm off, quickly bleed to death, and then five minutes later help arrives. 😆
yup. most people would soil themselves if they encountered this sight, but this is precisely what you do
https://youtube.com/shorts/vuWESTDxQkE?si=LNj3ZZPP7zyfFF7e
or another option is to go all WWE on it and throw hands. but you best be very careful, because you never know when you'll encounter a bear that's proficient in martial arts. and bee tee dubs, that's a real bear in the background watching this little exposition
https://youtube.com/shorts/xcCqmnlIR2Y?si=vQvcWcP59buh8eyp
you'll never be able to outrun a bad diet
Honestly, if I ran into one of these big cats, I would pretend to be his friend, make small talk, then when he least expects it, poke him in the eye. Because no one likes to be poked in the eye, it hurts.
In all seriousness, I can't get over how intimidating these big cats look.
The Sumatran tiger, an absolute unit.
My uncle lives on a mountain in Colorado with his wife, they have mountain lions up there, you see them every now and then, but definitely want to keep your distance from them. The thing is, they can climb trees as well, very intimidating cats.
The interesting thing is in military martial arts training, where killing or maiming the opponent is of course an option, the eye poke is an excellent tactic. I would imagine that if a wild animal is on top of you, while playing dead is perhaps the preferred option, especially with a powerful bear, poking it the eye I think would also be an option if playing dead isn't working.
Not easy to do trying to poke a fast moving animal in their eye. The .357 option is much better.
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These guys are likely very experienced with brown bears, there was a number of guys there, and I think the bear made a quick decision to run rather than risk bodily harm from a group of humans.
But you're right, I definitely would need a fruit of the loom change after that one. 😆
You've probably seen it, on those African safaris, with a group of tourists in an open vehicle, the lions walk right up to the vehicle and walk by with no problem.
The main reason is the lions simply don't consider us to be a prey animal. They've grown-up seeing these safari vehicles all the time, and just pay it no mind.
Fascinating stuff, I've always loved the lions in Africa, beautiful creatures, I think humans should watch over them and protect them. I honestly can't stand zoos, I've been to zoos before and will never go back to one, I just think it's cruel to capture an animal from it's natural habitat and imprison it, so a bunch of people can gawk at it. Lions really are not much different from us, they fight amongst each other, but they have their little families and if you take the time to observe their routines, they are a lot like us.
I agree with ya. Back before the internet, I could see zoos as a way for folks to see animals. But with the internet and the countless number of great videos about animals, in my view zoos are really obsolete at this point.
Frankly, in my opinion ya get a much better, infinitely better, feel for the animal being shown in the wild, than penned up in a cage at a zoo. So what's the point of a zoo? There is none in my view.
Exactly, I would much rather see an animal in the wild, it's natural habitat, free. There's more than enough videos, articles, etc. out there to view these animals.
Listen everyone, I'm packing it in for the night, been a long day, I'll leave you with some African Lion music for your enjoyment, goodnight everybody!
The Shackleton expedition and the rugby team crash are two of the many examples of the ‘third man factor’. Coping mechanism or divine assistance experienced by many people in life threatening situations.
Shackelton felt the presence of an invisible companion on his long trek with two of his fellow explorers.
I just watched Netflix "Society of the Snow"
Incredible story
In the seventies I was camping in the Rocky Mountains I was ready to doze off in a sleeping bag suddenly I was nudged by a park ranger with his foot telling me to move to a secure campground because bears were spotted in the vicinity suddenly he raised his rifle as to shoot aiming at something i turned in the opposite direction to see what he was talking about i did not see the bear but noticed that the branches were moving like they were just brushed by a fleeing bear!