From a disastrous polar expedition to a terrifying trip at sea, here are the most incredible
stories of survival you’ve never heard before!
10: Sir.
Douglas Mawson Sir.
Douglas Mawson went on an expedition to Antarctica over 100 years ago and had the worst time
of his life.
He departed Commonwealth Bay on November 10, 1912 after arriving in the polar region from
Australia.
He and two other explorers went on foot, taking with them three sledges to be pulled by 16
huskies.
They had about 1720 pounds(780kg) of food, plenty of survival gear, and all the necessary
scientific instruments.
They traveled about 300 miles(482km) in just over a month, moving inland across Antarctica.
But then things started to get strange.
One of the dogs was spotted eating her own babies after giving birth, one of the explorers
nearly fell through a crack in the ice, Douglas himself had accidentally split his lip because
of the cold and was in terrible pain, and another member of the party had snow blindness!
It was looking pretty grim!
Soon enough, one of the team members fell into a crevasse and died.
He went about 150 feet(46m) down into a crack of ice, taking all their food with him.
The others had no choice but to turn back.
But soon the second man perished, leaving Douglas Mawson alone in Antarctica, 100 miles(160km)
from the nearest person.
What followed was a horrifying trip in which Douglas Mawson was ravaged by the cold.
His skin melted off from lack of nutrition mixed with frostbite.
And by the time he finally got back to base camp, broken and weak and just moments away
from death – the rescue ship had already gone back to Australia.
He was forced to stay a second winter in Antarctica.
Though it may have been for the better, as the team left behind at base camp was able
to nurse him back to health.
9: Jose Salvador Alvarenga Jose Salvador Alvarenga spent 438 days stuck
in the Pacific Ocean.
He had nothing but a 25-foot(7.6m) fishing boat with no sail and no motor and no hope
of survival.
His nightmare began on November 17, 2012 when he set off from Costa Azul, Mexico for a 2
day fishing trip to catch some sharks.
He went 100 miles(161km) offshore with his fishing partner, hoping to make a bit of money
in the small coastal village where they lived.
Even though both men knew a storm was coming, they didn't think it would be a big deal.
And according to Jose, it wasn't the storm that caused the problem.
The problem came when the engine gave out.
The two men had their boat thrashed for seven days by the storm out at sea!
They lost the radio and fishing gear.
By the time the storm passed, the two men had nothing but a bucket between them.
Their boat had also drifted very far from Mexico.
Lost at sea, Jose managed to catch fish without using a hook or line by literally snatching
them out of the water.
But fish did not prove enough.
Jose also started catching seabirds that landed on the vessel near them, then eating the birds
like raw chicken.
Jose and his companion then drank the birds’ blood to sustain themselves.
Jose's friend died after just two weeks out at sea.
Somehow, Jose went on surviving for over 400 days more until he landed on the Marshall
Islands and was saved by locals on the beach.
He did make a full recovery and was flown back to his native country of El Salvador,
though Jose has never again gone into the ocean.
8: Ricky Megee In Australia, a man named Ricky Megee survived
in the Outback for 2 1/2 months by eating nothing but frogs and snakes and lizards.
His car broke down on January 23 while he drove along the Buntine highway, straddling
the border between the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
For whatever crazy reason, he then decided to wander away from his vehicle.
It was at that point that he got lost and ended up wandering deeper and deeper into
the Outback.
He had no idea where he was, which direction he was supposed to go, or how he was supposed
to survive.
Ricky built a primitive shelter near a dam, drinking the water he found there and catching
small reptiles whenever he had the chance.
This went on for a while before he pushed the rest of the way through the outback.
It took 10 weeks for him to finally make it to civilization, at which point he came across
a man named Mark Clifford who had been managing the Birrindudu cattle station.
Ricky had lost almost all of his weight and was quickly taken to the hospital.
But even after Ricky made a full recovery and was discharged from the hospital just
days after being admitted, the authorities could not locate his vehicle.
Nobody could figure out where he began his journey into the Outback or what happened
to his car.
Someone either stole it or Ricky was dropped into the middle of the desert by aliens.
What do you think happened to Ricky’s car?
Let me know in the comments below and if you’re liking this video, be sure to hit the thumbs
up and subscribe button if you haven’t already!
:) 7: Angela Hernandez
Angela Hernandez from Oregon accidentally drove her SUV off a cliff in California and
plummeted 250 feet(76m) onto a remote beach below.
It happened on July 6, when the 23-year-old woman was passing through Big Sur.
Something moved in front of her on the road, she swerved to avoid the critter, and she
went right off the shoulder.
Angela blacked out after her crash and when she woke up, she was trapped in her vehicle
as it filled with water.
According to Angela herself, she could feel the water rising over her knees.
She managed to swim to shore, and she passed out.
Angela would spend the next few days dehydrated, disoriented, and injured.
She had nothing to eat, she had nowhere to go, and she was stuck at the bottom of the
cliff, unable to get back up to the road.
The worst part is that she could hear and even see the cars driving past on the road
above but was helpless to catch their attention.
This poor woman was stuck for seven days in absolutely horrendous shape before a couple
finally decided to take a leisurely hike along the beach and heard Angela’s screams for
help.
The couple ran to the woman's aid.
They called the police and rescue services soon hoisted Angela up the cliff and then
airlifted her to the hospital, where doctors found she had a brain hemorrhage, a collapsed
lung, fractured ribs, and broken bones.
It was amazing that she survived seven days sitting on a rocky beach getting splashed
by saltwater.
6: Real Life Tarzan Ho Van Thanh spent 41 years living in the
forest of Vietnam after fleeing from the war.
This guy is the closest thing you'll ever find to a real-life Tarzan.
He was an army veteran who fled from his small village in 1972 with his infant son after
a bomb dropped by forces from the United States of America killed his innocent wife and two
other children.
Ho and his son retreated into the forest in the Tay Tra district of the Quang Ngai province
and weren't seen again until 2013.
Since locals found them eight years ago, Ho and his son have been adapting to civilized
society.
But before that, they had been living in tree houses, wearing loincloths like Mowgli.
They typically hunted monkeys and rats – but nothing was off the menu, including snakes
and bats and any fruits and vegetables they could get their hands on.
Even though Ho had spent much of his life in civilization before fleeing to the jungle,
his son hadn't.
He hardly spoke any Vietnamese.
He had no concept of time except for day and night.
He knew nothing of the outside world and had not seen a woman once in his 41 years of living.
He had literally no idea what a female was.
But even more amazing than females were lightbulbs and electricity, which the 41-year-old jungle
boy had never witnessed.
5: The Robertson Family In January of 1971, the Robertson family climbed
into their yacht and sailed away from England.
18 months later, they found themselves being attacked by a group of angry killer whales
while out at sea!
The killer whales actually destroyed their yacht and forced the family on board a leaky
raft.
They only had enough water for 10 days and all they had to eat was a tin of biscuits
and some oranges.
They were at constant risk of sinking.
Plus, sharks were circling them in the water too!
Amazingly, the Robertson family survived.
The entire family went on living by hydrating themselves on turtle blood and eating whatever
kinds of creatures got close enough to their raft to catch.
Finally, a Japanese fishing boat happened upon them.
The family was so dehydrated that none of them had peed for over 20 days.
Their tongues were so swollen that they couldn't speak.
The ship took them to Panama, where the family celebrated the rescue with a huge breakfast
of steak and eggs.
4: Ada Blackjack Ada Blackjack was born in the small settlement
of Spruce Creek, Alaska.
Her father died when she was young, and her mother sent her to a Methodist mission school
far away in Nome, one of the most remote towns in the world.
She married when she was 16 and had three children.
Later, she got a divorce, which left her destitute.
Then in 1921, she joined an Arctic expedition led by a Canadian Explorer named Alan Crawford.
Her job was to sew fur clothing for the expedition team.
The expedition team was sent to Wrangle Island north of Siberia to claim the island for Canada.
The conditions almost immediately turned bad.
Rations ran out quickly, the team couldn't kill enough animals to survive, and within
four months, three of the men abandoned the mission and tried to cross 700 miles(1127km)
of the frozen Cukchi Sea to reach Siberia.
Ada was left behind with a member of the team named Lorne Knight, who was suffering from
scurvy.
Ada cared for the man until he finally died on June 23, 1923.
The three men who had gone in search of help were never seen from again.
Ada was alone in the middle of nowhere.
Amazingly, Ada used her traditional skills to survive in the brutal conditions until
she was rescued eight months later in August.
The newspapers at the time called her the real female Robinson Crusoe.
Ada used the money she earned from the expedition to take her only surviving son to Seattle,
where she cured his tuberculosis before remarrying, having another son, then moving back to the
Arctic and living until the age of 85.
3: Ernest Shackleton Ernest Shackleton was an Antarctic Explorer
who led the fateful Endurance expedition of 1914 to 1916.
He was chosen for his first Antarctic expedition in 1901 and joined a group of people who attempted
to journey to the South Pole.
They got closer to the South Pole than anyone before them.
But Shackleton never finished the trip and had to go back home.
He returned to the Antarctic in 1908 and got even closer to the South Pole, and when he
returned to Britain, he was knighted.
But it was in 1914 when Shackleton made his third trip to the Antarctic on the ship Endurance,
the vessel became trapped in the ice and sank ten months later.
By the time the ship sank, Shackleton was living with the remaining crew on a floating
piece of ice.
It was brutal living, and after two years of misery in the Antarctic, Shackleton finally
set off with a small crew of three boats and spent 16 days crossing the ocean before they
finally reached a whaling station.
Once there, Shackleton recruited help to go back and rescue the rest of his crew.
This is one of the most amazing stories of Antarctic survival because not a single member
of the expedition died.
Every single person survived and Shackleton even went back to the Antarctic again in 1922
to circumnavigate the continent, but died of a heart attack before he could ever complete
it.
2: LaMia Flight 2933 When LaMia Flight 2933 crashed in the Colombian
mountains back in 2016, 71 people were killed.
Only six survived the horrifying incident, with one of them being a man named Erwin Tumiri,
who told newspapers that the only reason he survived is that he followed protocol.
He claims that he survived the air crash with minimal damage to himself because he put his
bags between his legs and contorted himself into the fetal position.
He also says that while he was doing this, he witnessed passengers rising from their
seats and running around screaming.
If his story is to be believed, the next time you get on an aircraft, you better take that
safety manual out from the seat pocket in front of you and get to reading!
Luckily, the survivors didn't need to hold on for long.
Rescue crews reached the wreckage of the aircraft quickly to evacuate the bodies of the deceased
and to get the survivors to the hospital.
The reason the plane crashed at all is apparently because it never had enough fuel to reach
its final destination!
The pilot gambled and lost, resulting in dozens of deaths and broken families.
1: Ann Rodgers Ann Rogers was 72-years-old at the time of
her harrowing tale of survival.
She was an ordinary Tucson resident who got lost on a remote part of the Fort Apache Indian
Reservation after running out of fuel.
She sat in her car for two days and never saw another vehicle pass by.
So, she wandered off to look for help and ended up in the Arizona wilderness, surviving
by eating desert plants, drinking from a creek, and building small fires at night to keep
warm.
She was lost in the desert and nobody knew where she was!
It would be over a week until she was found, and only because an officer from White River
Tribal Game and Fish found her dog wandering loose in the wilderness.
Then an aerial search team found the remains of one of her shelters.
She was finally spotted by her signal fire, waving at the aircraft.
When Ann was rescued, she was in rough shape.
She’d spent 9 days in the wilderness and was pretty rugged.
But Ann made a full recovery and even managed to get some gas to fill up her car, which
was right where she’d left it!
Thanks for watching!
Do you think you could survive getting lost in the desert?
Let me know about any experiences you’ve had in the comments and be sure to hit the
subscribe button for more great videos!