(hard rock music)
- [Voiceover] To most people,
the thought of being buried alive is horrific.
However, in 1937, a French 19-year-old named Angelo Hays
had to live through this very nightmare.
Hays was in a horrible motorcycle accident (engine roars)
that sent him flying headfirst into a brick wall.
First responders pronounced him dead on the scene
and the accident left his face so disfigured
that his parents were not even allowed to view his body.
Two days after his burial, his body was exhumed
by the request of a local insurance company,
as they needed some more information
for their liability investigation.
When his body is removed from his coffin for inspection,
it was discovered that his body was still warm.
Hays had, in fact, not been dead at all,
but was actually in a deep coma.
In fact, it was that very coma that had kept him alive.
After surgery and rehabilitation, Hays recovered fully
and went on to be quite a celebrity
due to his miraculous rise from the grave.
Another nightmare is being trapped in an elevator
as it is in freefall, especially if that elevator
is in one of the tallest buildings in the world.
In July 1945, Betty Lou Oliver,
who was an elevator attendant at the Empire State Building,
survived this exact scenario.
On that foggy day in July, a B-25 bomber plane
crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building.
The cables of Lou's elevator were compromised by the crash,
and she was trapped as the elevator
plummeted down 75 stories, all the way down
to the Empire State Building's basement.
Luckily for her, the 1,000 feet of elevator cable
also fell to the ground
and created a cushion for her landing.
Miraculously, she was able to survive.
In the year 2000, Dr. Anna Bagenholm
survived the worst case of hypothermia ever seen,
after being trapped under ice.
The young doctor was skiing on her favorite trail
in Norway with some friends.
They were navigating their skis around a waterfall
when Bagenholm fell headfirst into the water
and became trapped underneath the ice.
For 40 minutes, she hung onto life
after finding an air pocket.
Despite this incredible luck,
hypothermia quickly got the better of her,
and she fell unconscious underneath the unforgiving ice.
When rescue workers arrived and pulled her out,
she had no pulse at all.
After being flown to the hospital,
her body was slowly warmed up over the course of nine hours.
Remarkably, she survived the ordeal
and only sustained minor nerve damage to her hands.
The fear of flying or suddenly not flying
is one of the most common fears.
And often with plane crashes, few survive to tell the tale.
But in 1971, a 17-year-old girl, Juliane Koepcke,
survived a plane crash with an amazing story.
On her flight from Lima to Pucallpa, Peru,
her plane caught fire when the wing
of her plane was struck by lightning. (lightning cracks)
The plane shattered in the air,
and all six crew members and the other 91 passengers died.
But Koepcke somehow survived
an unreal 10,000-foot fall to the ground,
all the while strapped into her seat.
She then had to spend 10 days surviving the jungle,
until she was finally rescued.
The most interesting thing about her ordeal
is that if she hadn't fastened her seatbelt,
it's likely she would not have survived.
Surviving a night in the woods
is the stuff horror movies are made of. (dog barking)
Most people can't even go an hour without their cell phone,
so it makes it even more impressive
when you hear about Yossi Ghinsberg,
who survived alone in the woods for 19 days.
While trekking through the Amazon jungle,
Ghinsberg got separated from his companion
when their raft lost control.
His companion somehow made it to shore,
but Ghinsberg went over a waterfall and was swept away.
He would then spend the following 19 days
all alone in the dangerous and inhospitable Amazon.
Yossi clung to life by eating fruit
and raw eggs that he stole from nests.
His unbelievable adventures lost in the jungle
included a late-night encounter with a jaguar,
being eaten alive by swarms of termites,
and almost drowning in a bog.
His misery and desperate battle for life
only ended after he eventually found
a search party of locals.
Instead of being permanently scarred by his ordeal,
Ghinsberg went on to use his experience
to become a motivational speaker.
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