Resilient Spirits: 15 Miraculous Tales of Survival
It is truly amazing what the human body can achieve when pinned against life or death situations. Many survivors claim it to be an out-of-body experience – when survival instincts kick in and the brain shuts down. Below is a list of miraculous tales of survival that illustrate the resiliency of the human spirit.
Aron Ralston
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Aron Ralston was hiking in the canyons of Utah when an 800-pound boulder fell on his arm and left him for dead. Pinned and bleeding for five days, he chose to cut off his own arm as his only chance of survival. Leveraging the boulder to snap his bone, he then used a pocketknife to cutaway the surrounding tissue and tendons and managed to rappel down a 65-foot cliff to stagger to his rescue.
Team Endurance
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In 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton assembled a crew for an Antarctic expedition on his ship, Endurance. With no guarantee of return, but certain glory if they managed, their tale began as the ship crashed into an ice pack. Stranded in an unforgiving land and caring only for survival, the crew walked thousands of miles, floated on icebergs, ate seal blubber and came out battered but alive an astonishing two years later.
Joe Simpson
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Joe Simpson and Simon Yates attempted to scale the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. In the midst of a blizzard, Simpson fell and broke his leg leaving it to Yates to get the duo down to safety. Yates lowered them bit-by-bit until their anchor slipped and left them dangling precariously. After a silent hour of deliberation, Yates presumed Simpson to be dead and cut his rope. Simpson fell onto an ice brige below where despite massive injury, dehydration and hypothermia, he managed to crawl five miles over the course of three days where he was reunited with Yates at base camp.
Alexander Selkirk
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In 1704, Alexander Selkirk caused some trouble on his expedition ship and was left to die on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. His deserters left him with only a musket, gunpowder, carpenter’s tools, a knife, a Bible and the clothes on his back. In total solitude, Alexander managed to survive on the island for four years and four months before he was eventually discovered and rescued by a British ship in 1709.
Douglas Mawson
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A trio of explorers set out from their base camp to explore the Antarctic; one teammate fell through an invisible ice crevasse taking all supplies along with him, another soon perished due to weakness leaving Douglas Mawson as the sole survivor. Surviving on the meat from his dog, he too fell into a crevasse but was miraculously saved when his sled caught and left him suspended in safety. Days later, he found his way back to camp where his condition caused his team to ask, “My God, which one are you?”
Juliane Koepcke
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Flight 508 was struck by lightning above a Peruvian rainforest and 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke was the only survivor. Still strapped in her seat, she was ejected from the plane and landed two miles from the wreckage. Upon returning to consciousness, she had a broken collarbone and was blind in one eye but had the wits to know “where there’s water there’s people.” She walked along the river for nine days until she found a cabin where she treated her worm-infested wounds and awaited the owner.
Uruguayan Rugby Team
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A Uruguayan rugby team was put to the test when their plane flying over the Andes crashed into the peaks. Of the 45 people on board, only 16 survived the initial crash and the avalanche that followed on day 17. The survivors managed to stay alive for 10 weeks by resorting to cannibalism – eating the flesh of the fallen. Two of the men eventually ventured out, flagged down a Chilean horseman and ended the 72-day struggle.
Steven Callahan
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Six days after Steven Callahan set sail on a boat he built himself, it sank and left him drifting aimlessly on a 5-foot life raft. With minimal rations and a makeshift spear, he battled malnourishment, dehydration, sunburn, a now leaking raft and countless shark attacks on his road to survival. In total Callahan drifted 1,800 miles and managed to survive 76 days on the barren sea before his rescue.
Yossi Ghinsberg
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Yossi Ghinsberg ventured into the Bolivian Amazon with a total of three friends. When they realized they were lost and lacking supplies, the foursome decided to divide into pairs – Ghinsberg and his partner floated a raft down the river while the others were never seen again. Ghinsberg’s raft eventually hit a rock and the duo was split to fend for themselves. While his partner immediately found help, Ghinsberg was left alone in the wild for 19 days before his partner and a rescue team recovered him.
Tami Oldham Ashcraft
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When sailing vet Tami Oldham Ashcraft and her fiancée Richard Sharp accepted the duty to deliver a sailboat from Tahiti to San Diego, they never considered Hurricane Raymond. Caught amongst 50-foot waves and 160-mph winds; the boat capsized and knocked Ashcraft unconscious. She woke 27 hours later to find that Sharp was gone and the boat was in shambles. Determined, she reconstructed a makeshift mast and sail, plotted a 1,500-mile course to Hawaii and braved forty days at sea.
Ricky Megee
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Ricky Megee was drugged while hitchhiking and left for dead in the middle of the Australian Northern Territory. Disoriented and malnourished, he constructed shelters when needed, drank water when he could and lived off of leeches, insects, snakes, frogs and lizards. Surviving the outback for a total of 71 days, Megee started his fight at 230 pounds and was a mere 105 pounds when he wondered onto the farm that ultimately rescued him.
Mark Inglis and Phil Doole
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Mark Inglis and Phil Doole were climbing the peaks Aoraki Mount Cook, New Zealand’s highest mountain, when a white storm surrounded them. Desperate, they built a snow cave in an attempt to stay put and wait-out the blizzard’s wrath. Though they managed to survive the elements for 13 days with minimal rations, they both suffered extreme frostbite and their legs were later amputated.
Joe Spring
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An innocent day of cross-country skiing in Steamboat Springs, CO turned nasty for Joe Spring when he broke his leg. In the middle of nowhere and with minimal day-trip supplies, he crawled 13 hours a day for eight days in the direction of home. Greatly dehydrated and losing more than 35 pounds before his rescue, he spent his nights shivering in tree wells and drew motivation from the anguish that others would feel if he were to die.
Andrew Taber
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Andrew Taber and his friend Loïc Pillois found themselves lost in a 78-mile section of forest near Approuague River in South America. Spending a total of 51 days in the jungle, the duo divvied out tasks for survival and resorted to eating beetles, tarantulas and even bugs that swarmed to their excrement. They lost 100 pounds collectively on their 76-mile journey to the edge of the jungle where they were miraculously sited just 2 miles from Saül.
Poon Lim
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Poon Lim jumped overboard with a life vest moments before the boilers exploded on his WWII battleship. Stranded at sea, 750 miles east of the Amazon, he was the sole survivor of the wreckage. After securing a small life raft, he spent his days fashioning fishhooks from nails, snaring birds and corralling rainwater for hydration. Now a legend, Lim was discovered by a Brazilian fisherman 133 days after the original shipwreck.
Add “without internet” to all of these and these are truly remarkable.