First off, we thank Wondrium,
a museum for your mind,
for sponsoring this video.
Can you imagine
falling 10,000 meters (33,000 ft)
from a plane,
being trapped underwater
for days
or surviving a massive
radioactive discharge?
All this seems like a death sentence,
but today
you're going to meet
five incredible people
who survived these
impossible scenarios.
Were they just extremely lucky,
or were there secrets to their survival?
Sometimes, the difference between
life and death
can be a matter of a few tiny details.
If you had left for work
one minute earlier,
you wouldn't have boarded the train
that was about to crash, for example.
But in some cases,
it seems weirder than that.
And those are the stories
we'll be focusing on today.
Yup, finding all these amazing
survival stories
and strategies is not an easy task.
Fortunately,
we have some fantastic tools to do so,
such as Wondrium,
a platform full of not only documentaries
but also video courses,
tutorials and lectures.
It's academically reliable and fun.
In each course,
you learn from the best experts
in the world.
Wondrium is a museum for your mind,
full of amazing facts.
This time
I found a mind-blowing fact
about global warming.
Did you know that concrete
and steel
are serious contributors
to global greenhouse gas emissions?
And every month,
the world is building
an equivalent
of an entire New York City.
Scary, isn't it?
Fortunately, scientists
and entrepreneurs
are working together across the globe
to find ways to reduce,
and even remove,
greenhouse gases from the atmosphere,
as shown in Wondrium's
original documentary
Solving For Zero,
based on the Bill Gates book,
“How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”
If you want access to amazing facts
like this every day,
you can join Wondrium.
You'll have access to a free trial
just for being a
How to Survive subscriber.
and enjoy this huge source
of mind-blowing knowledge for free.
Click the link in the description below
to start your free trial today.
But to enjoy this museum
for your mind,
you'll first have to survive
the impossible.
It was a cold, snowy night
in 1980 in Minnesota
when Jean was driving home
and her car went off the road.
Not wanting to spend the night
in a broken-down car
with no heat
while the temperature dropped,
she decided to walk 3 km (2 mi)
to a friend's house.
Fighting snowy, windy conditions,
she collapsed a few meters
from the front door
and spent the night
exposed to the freezing temperatures.
Her friend found her
the next morning, covered in snow
and frozen solid.
Jean survived
because her body reacted
to the extreme cold
as if she was hibernating.
Her blood flow slowed,
requiring less oxygen for metabolism
and helping prevent brain damage as a result.
Although under certain conditions
the body can survive extreme situations
like the one Hilliard found herself in,
it is best to
stay in the car
to protect yourself from the elements.
Also, Jean's accident occurred in 1980,
when cell phones weren’t around.
Always keep your phone
charged before you hit the road
and a couple of extra blankets
in your trunk.
Aron's story became world-famous
in the 2010 movie
"127 Hours",
which showed him
spending more than five days
with his right arm
trapped between a 360 kg (800 lb) boulder
and a cliff face
in the Canyonlands National Park
in the U.S.
With little food or water
and exposed to blistering heat,
Aron decided
to amputate his arm to free himself.
"My name is Aron Ralston."
So you have to be prepared
to make drastic decisions to survive.
In this case, the most important thing
is making a tourniquet
at the end of the amputated limb
to prevent any blood loss.
Also, avoid rock climbing alone,
carry a radio
in addition to your cell phone
and let people know
where you are going to be.
Harrison was a cook
on the Jascon-4 tugboat.
When it capsized in 2013,
he tried to reach an emergency exit,
but the ship was sinking so fast
that he was sucked into the bathroom cabin.
More than 30 m (100 ft) underwater
and with the rest of the tug's crew dead,
the space Harrison was enclosed in
had a small air pocket form in it
that provided him
enough oxygen to breathe.
60 hours later,
when a rescue team was trying
to recover his crewmates' bodies,
they found Harrison.
"He's alive. He's alive."
You will have to find a sealed location
that can create an air bubble,
limit your movement
and slow your breathing
in order to stay alive
until rescuers arrive.
In 1978,
Anatoli was a physicist
at the Soviet Union's
largest particle accelerator.
When a piece of equipment began
to malfunction,
he entered the machine to fix it.
At the same time,
several safety mechanisms failed
and a beam of protons
hit him at almost the speed of light.
It penetrated his head
with more than 400 times
the normal lethal dose of radiation.
Within hours,
his face swelled up beyond recognition.
The skin was peeled away
at the entry and exit wounds,
allowing doctors to see the beam's path
through his skull and brain.
His face became partially paralyzed,
Experts attribute
his strange survival story
to the fact that the particle beam
was very narrow
and concentrated,
minimizing the amount of damage
to his brain.
The major lesson here?
You'd better keep your head
out of particle accelerators.
In 1972,
the passenger plane on which Vesna
worked on as a flight attendant
was mistakenly shot down
by the Czechoslovakia army.
There were 28 people on board,
but only Vesna survived.
While the rest of the passengers and crew
were sucked into the air,
she was trapped in the fuselage
by a food cart.
She plummeted 10,000 m (33,000 ft)
to the ground,
the highest human free fall
ever recorded.
Trees and snow cushioned her fall,
Vesna suffered a fractured skull,
two broken legs
and three broken vertebrae.
She even spent a month in a coma.
But after a year and a half
in the hospital,
she managed to recover.
If you find yourself
in a fall of epic proportions,
try to aim for something,
anything, to buffer your landing.
”Brace.”
Luckily for you,
the odds of falling out of an airplane
or getting your head
blasted with radiation
in a particle accelerator
are pretty low.
But there are things inside your home
that could kill you at any moment.
Do you know what household accident
kills the most people?
Find out here on How to Survive.