From being lost in the ice for months, to falling from a plane and being stranded in
outer space, here are 8 of the most famous survival stories ever.
8.
Steven Callahan Steven Callahan spent his entire life around
boats and is a seasoned inventor and sailor.
When he was 29 years old he built a 6.5 meter sloop called “Napoleon Solo” and went
out to fulfill his dream of crossing the Atlantic during a sailing competition that would start
in the Canary Islands and finish in the Caribbean.
He had been through many storms and knew his boat well but one night he woke up when something,
he says maybe a whale or shark, smashed into the boat with a bang!
Water came pouring and the boat began to sink fast.
He was able to pack his life-raft, diving underwater to get supplies as his boat was
sinking, then he was totally alone.
He had the shirt on his back, a few pounds of food, 8 pints of freshwater, a solar still
to make drinking water, and various gear that he could use like a fishing line and tackles.
For the next 76 days, Steven Callahan drifted across the open waters with no one to talk
to but himself.
He saw a handful of boats but nobody ever saw him and as he drifted he became more and
more stranded.
Part of his raft ripped and there were many days he thought he would die in a few hours.
The solar still stopped working, and while he was able to eat fish and birds, he started
noticing his mind and body begin to shut down.
Eventually, after 1800 miles of travel he was spotted by some fishermen off Guadeloupe
after they saw all the birds hovering around his raft trying to get the fish guts he was
throwing out.
He was finally rescued although it took him 6 weeks before he was able to walk properly.
He wrote a book where you can learn more about his story called Adrift: 76 Days Lost At Sea.
7.
The Robertson Family Not to be confused with the "Swiss Family
Robinson" story about a different kind of shipwrecked family, or the cast of Duck Dynasty,
the Robertson's were on a journey to see the world.
Or as their patriarch Dougal Robertson said, to see the "University of Life".
Since Mr. Robertson had retired as a merchant navy officer, he and his wife Lyn ran a dairy
farm with their 4 children.
So to get out of the rural UK, they departed to see the world and go on an adventure on
January 27th, 1971.
However, the children reported that their father had no experience and that they didn’t
even practice sailing around the bay before going around the world.
But for a year and a half, they did rather well on the 43 foot wooden schooner called
the Lucette.
That is until they got near the Galapagos Islands and their boat was struck by a pod
of killer whales- (which for the record is not something that happens often).
The whales utterly destroyed the boat, but thankfully the family was able to survive
by making it onto an inflatable liferaft and dinghy.
But, they only had six days worth of food, and problems started right at the beginning.
They were able to survive on rainwater and turtle meat but after 16 days the inflatable
raft was no longer usable.
They were able to crowd onto the dinghy and it wasn’t until 38 days later that they
were finally spotted by a Japanese fishing trawler.
The family wrote several books about their experience “Survive the Savage Sea and The
Last Voyage of the Lucette.
And now for number 6, but first be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already and share
any travel adventure stories you’ve had in the comments below!
6.
Juliane Koepcke Now known as “The girl who fell from the
sky”, Juliane Koepcke’s story of survival is pretty incredible.
Juliane and her mother boarded LANSA Flight 508 on December 24th, 1971, after her prom
to meet with her father for Christmas.
The flight was only supposed to last about an hour, but around half way through, the
plane flew into a thunderstorm and was struck by lightning.
The plane went into a nosedive, partially exploded, and Julienne felt herself falling
and falling somewhere over the Peruvian rainforest.
She was flung from the plane but still strapped into her seat and she says that she could
feel the seatbelt squeezing her so tightly that she couldn’t breathe.
She had fallen around 10,000 feet and landed in the middle of the jungle.
Of the 93 people onboard, only 17-year-old Juliane survived.
She suffered a broken collarbone, a gash on her leg and a swollen eye.
But now, she had to survive the jungle.
The good thing was that she had been living with her parents at a research center 30 miles
away and so she tried to get her bearings and follow a stream to get out from the forest
canopy.
She remembers hearing the search planes overhead but had no way of getting their attention.
She was starving and became infested with maggots that buried under her skin.
All she had was a thin summer dress as she waded through the water, spending the nights
along the river bank.
It was not until 11 days later that she finally found a shack.
She was discovered by forestry workers who delivered her to safety.
Sadly her mother had also survived but was severely injured and died in the jungle.
Julienne now works as a biologist and librarian in Bavaria and wrote a book called “When
I fell from the Sky”.
5.
Harrison Okene Harrison Okene truly defied the odds after
surviving for 3 days trapped under a sunken ship.
The 29-year-old was a chef on a tugboat and was in the bathroom when the boat began to
capsize.
On May 28th, 2013, rescue divers were sent down to search the sunken vessel miles off
the coast of Nigeria.
It is general practice for people on ships to lock themselves in their rooms at night
in case there are pirates in this area.
That, combined with the fact that the boat had sunk so quickly, gave the rescue team
zero hopes of pulling out anyone alive.
Okene had tried to get out of the bathroom but the ship was sinking quickly and he was
unable to reach an emergency hatch.
He scrambled and swam to the engineer’s office where he found a small air pocket.
This random air bubble saved his life, as by now the boat was 100 feet underwater.
He heard hammering on the deck after almost 60 hours and the divers were shocked to find
Harrison Okene sitting in water in an air pocket.
It was a miracle!
He spent two days in a decompression chamber and was the only one to survive the accident.
4.
Hiroo Onoda During World War II, a Japanese soldier by
the name of Hiroo Onoda was given an order by his commanding officer before departing
on a mission.
That order?
"No Surrender!"
He must stay and fight at all costs.
He survived in the jungles of the Philippines for 30 years before accepting that the war
was over.
At 20, he had enlisted in the Imperial Japanese Army as an intelligence agent and was trained
in martial arts and guerrilla warfare.
During the tail-end of WWII, he was sent on a mission in 1944 to destroy the pier of the
island of Lubang and in general halt the American advance.
Once he was dropped off in the jungle, he and his unit of 3 avoided capture, terrorized
the locals and remained hidden.
When Japan surrendered on August 15, they refused to acknowledge defeat.
There were many searches for them, including airdrops of written pleas from their families
and notes people would leave them telling them the war was over.
But there was no reply and they continued to “fight” for 30 years.
Onoda was officially declared dead in 1959.
Onoda was finally located in 1974 by a student explorer but refused to stand down until he
heard the words from his commanding officer.
Luckily, he was still alive and told him that there was no longer any combat activity and
to lay down his arms.
3.
The Donner Party The Donner Party (also known as the Donner-Reed
Party) was a group of pioneers, lead by brothers Jacob and George Donner and James Frasier
Reed.
This party of families travelling in covered wagons represented a new age of promise in
American history and they were all hoping to build their fortune in the rich land of
California.
They set out in April, 1846 following the directions set out in a book, called the Emigrant’s
Guide to Oregon and California written by Lansford W. Hastings.
This is very important because this man claimed to have found a new route that would save
pioneers 400 miles.
Turns out this route had never been tested, and this information would lead to their doom.
A series of very bad choices, and bad luck left them very behind schedule.
The 87 members of the party got stuck in the snow of the Sierra Nevada in early November
and their food began to run out.
Rescuers were sent out but they didn’t arrive until February of 1847, 4 months later.
Remember the game Oregon Trail?
And all the bad stuff that would happen to you??
Well that all happened to the Donner Party, and more.
Fights, disease, starvation, their draft animals were exhausted and anyone who couldn’t walk
was left to die.
They were attacked by indians and many of their animals were killed.
When they couldn’t move any further, they started to eat the animals.
Then they began boiling hides, twigs, bones, and bark, anything they could.
Men went out to try to cross the pass on foot but several died.
As others began to die at camp, they began to eat the only thing left, the bodies of
those frozen in the snow.
The survivors turned to cannibalism and they were later open about it in letters, journals,
and later interviews.
They were delirious from hunger and hypothermia and did what they could to survive.
When they were rescued only 48 of the original 87 members of the party were alive and more
died on the way out of the pass.
Their story remains to this day one of the most haunting tales of survival and has become
a major part of American folklore.
2.
Sir Ernest Shackleton Explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and the crew
of his Trans-Antarctic Expedition will go down in history as one of the greatest survival
stories of all time.
Sir Shackleton was already a famous explorer, having reached a record southern latitude
on his Antarctic expedition of 1907-09.
The next expedition would be to cross Antarctica from sea to sea through the pole.
So he prepared for the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1917, taking 56 men divided
onto two ships, one was a support ship with supplies that would meet them later.
They started the journey on the first ship, the Endurance, and started traveling through
the thick, icy water and ice floes.
After a couple of months, the Endurance got permanently stuck in the ice and so the crew
created a makeshift shelter.
The ship drifted for 10 months with the movement of the ice floes until it was finally crushed.
Supplies dwindled and they had to start eating the sled dogs.
The ice floe they were floating on began to break up and the 28 men crowded onto 3 lifeboats
trying to navigate the icy waters.
They finally landed on Elephant Island where they were able to live off of penguins and
seals.
6 men including Shackleton set out on a raft to go search for help because they knew that
otherwise, they wouldn’t make it.
Winter had set in and for 14 days they endured the freezing spray and waters and managed
to finally make it to civilization without capsizing.
It took another 3 months before they were able to rescue the men stranded on elephant
island.
Amazingly, all 28 survived.
1.
Apollo 13 The United States came very close to losing
the astronauts on the Apollo 13 mission.
It was supposed to be the 3rd lunar landing attempt but the mission was aborted after
an explosion occurred in an oxygen tank.
The mission was to follow in the footsteps of Apollo 11 and land on the moon.
The three-man crew, Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise were all experience in their
own right, with Lovell having been in space multiple times.
The mission was a sure fire success...until they got into space and everything went wrong.
Photos taken of the craft show that an entire side of the spacecraft was missing.
Luckily, they were able to move into the lunar module as a sort of life boat- the module
was supposed to be what they used to get to the moon’s surface and back and it wasn’t
equipped to take them back to Earth by any means!
It was only meant to support 2 men for 2 days, but now there were 3 men that needed about
90 hours.
So now the new mission was to get the astronauts home safely.
The goal was to use the gravity of the moon to slingshot them back into the Earth’s
orbit and land in the Pacific Ocean- all the while rationing their food, being careful
of their oxygen intake, and more.
They came up with a makeshift system using only materials available on the craft to help
manage the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels.
Though they didn't land on the moon, all three men were able to make it back home in one
piece.
It's considered one of the greatest feats of survival ever, especially in the Space
Program.
In fact, it was so grand, that President Richard Nixon was there to meet them and honor them
when they landed.
It was later made into a movie by legendary director Ron Howard and received many awards
and nominations for its portrayal of the event.
Thanks for watching!
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