Do you have what it takes?
If you were thrust into a scenario, one where perils threaten you from every direction,
could you make it out alive?
Not everybody can say “yes” with confidence, but the people in the following stories cannot
only answer in the affirmative, they have the experience to prove it.
The question we leave you with is which of these harrowing tales are true and which spawned
from our own imaginations?
The line that divides the factual from the unreal has long since blurred, the tales we
once thought fantastical now implanted as truth.
To decipher verity from the imagined, you must break from the ordinary and consider
a universe where the outlandish prevails.
Can you expand your mind to see beyond our perceived reality?
Can you decide what's fact or fiction?
Should you have a fear of flying, the story of Bethany Kappernack may not quell your worries
any.
Her unfortunate incident two-miles into the clear blue sky would be enough to turn anyone
away from air travel; but then again, maybe it’s just a story we cooked up and you have
nothing to worry about.
Story # 1: Freefalling Christmas Eve, 1973.
Bethany and her mother Michelle were struggling to enjoy a lengthy plane ride over the Panamanian
rainforest.
The delayed flight had made them seven hours late already and time seemed to creep by.
At an unknown hour during the flight, the passenger flight entered a thick, black cloud.
Cutting through the dense cloud cover, the craft started entered turbulence, causing
Michelle’s anxiety to kick in.
As Bethany tried to comfort her mother, a bolt of lightning cut through the sky, worsening
her fears.
Moments later, another bolt flashed, but as the sky turned to black, a glow that wasn’t
there before emanated from outside a passenger’s window.
When Bethany craned to see the source and caught a glimpse of the outer engine on fire,
she clasped her mother to her.
Before she could explain, the plane’s cabin went dark and the craft fell into a nose-dive.
In the chaos, Bethany had inadvertently let go of her mother to brace against the fall
and before she could grab her again, the plane started to break apart.
In an instant, she was freefalling through the sky still fastened to her seat.
Michelle was nowhere to be found and Bethany was forced to watch as the ground rushed towards
her alone.
Mid-fall, she lost consciousness.
When she came to, she was on the ground, miraculously alive, but certainly worse for wear.
She released herself from the seat that had apparently broken her two-mile fall and saved
her life, but as she tried to stand, her body gave way.
Spots of pain were all over her body, from deep cuts to a broken collarbone, but she
couldn’t let it keep her from pressing on.
She needed to find her mother.
She needed to find help.
But first, she needed to find out where she was.
No matter which direction she looked in, the jungle looked the same.
No distinguishing features, just a stretch of greenery that went on for miles.
She sobbed as she found no other signs of life nearby, but as she walked aimlessly,
she found scattered pieces of the plane and, among the wreckage, snacks to keep her moving.
It was four days before she came across other passengers from the flight, though they hadn’t
survived the crash.
She feared the worst, but upon inspection, found her mother wasn’t one of the corpses.
By day 10, a large cut on her leg had grown infected and became a feeding ground for maggots.
It was the last horror she would endure before being rescued on the 11th day in Panama.
Waking from her sleep on her 11th day, Bethany heard voices nearby and pleaded for help.
Though shocked by the broken and bloodied woman, two men who happened in the area helped
her back to a nearby village.
Here, they tended to her wounds.
After Bethany returned home and reunited with her father, they called for a search to find
Michelle.
Within days of searching, her body was found, lifeless, cold, and a feast for the elements.
Interlude 1: A two-mile drop back down to Earth sounds
like a guaranteed death, but is it possible Bethany’s seat actually broke her fall?
Having been injured and broken from the fall and left with little food, her 11-day survival
seems impossible, doesn't it?
Even if the fall didn’t kill her, clearly the rainforest would.
Let us know what you think in the comments, but let’s hold off on Bethany for now and
focus our attention on Luke Collins, a 15-year-old forced into a terrifying and deadly scenario.
On a camping trip with his father, Luke experienced the ferocity of nature and the unforgiving
temperament of life.
Story # 2: An Unbearable Encounter “Go, Luke!
Just go!”
Had the teenager been viewing the grizzly scene on a movie screen, he’d had felt the
tension and excitement of watching it unfold.
Standing there in the reality of it, watching a black bear approach his father, he only
felt fear.
His father had said black bears were timid, but this one had no qualms about approaching
the flailing, screaming man.
“Get to the car!”
Luke was frozen by the terror in his father’s voice.
He couldn’t run to the car.
His legs wouldn’t move and he didn’t even know where it was.
Luke had spent the entire walk through the New York wilderness snapping random photos
for Instagram.
The only thing that could get him to move was the first swipe from the bear that struck
his dad.
The grunt and pained yelp, a noise he can still hear years later, snapped him into action.
In that moment he ran towards the first place of safety he saw – a nearby, towering tree.
While the bear silenced its prey’s screams, Luke ran as tears clouded his eyes.
He ran to the thick tree and started climbing.
His father never warned him about bears and that, if persistent enough, the beast would
follow him up the tree.
Luke climbed as high as he could and waited, his sobs giving him away.
The bear never came for him, though.
As the Sun fell from the sky, the bear left the scene, leaving behind the picked carcass
of Luke’s father.
The teenager was thankful for nightfall and the dim stars.
He wouldn’t have to see his father’s corpse until sunrise.
The first sleepless night crept along and his terror and sorrow kept him locked in the
tree.
He just stared at the bloody mass on the ground and let the second day pass by without moving.
His body ached from the hard branch, but his limbs refused to function.
In the silence of the forest, he swore he could hear the bear growling nearby, just
waiting for him to come down.
By the third day, sleeplessness, hunger, and thirst plagued him.
As horrified by his father’s death as he was, he couldn’t let himself die in the
tree.
Through his fear, he forced himself to move.
With each rustling of leaves and crackling of the branches, he stopped to watch for the
bear’s return.
Luckily, it never did, even as he fell to the ground with a thud when a branch broke.
Despite his body’s screams of pain from the fall and lack of food or water, he didn’t
think to stop and grab anything from the campsite.
Muscling through pain and exhaustion, the teenager pressed through the forest, not knowing
where he’d wind up.
He wanted to give up, collapse on the ground and let whatever creature of nature take him,
but something kept him going.
When he finally broke through the thick canopy and found himself staring down the county
road, he simply sat down and cried.
A few minutes would pass by before a truck driver happened Luke, ending his 3-day nightmare.
Could you imagine have to witness the tragedy of your father’s death only to be forced
to survive the wilderness with limited survival skills and supplies?
Do you think a 15-year-old could really survive in the chill of the forest, a place filled
with hazards and hungry beasts?
We’d love to hear what you think, so head down to the comment section, but come back
quick because we have one last story to spin.
In this potentially fictitious tale, we meet United States Army Air Force pilot Elliot
Brenner and Imperial Japanese Navy pilot Mitsuo Isoroku.
In the heat of battle, the two find themselves forced to contemplate their odds of surviving
alone.
Story # 3: Surviving with the Enemy Brenner felt the hit before his Hellcat responded
to it, the engine sputtering as the hail of bullets threatened to drop him out of the
sky.
The young American pilot thought he could lose his interest if he flew far enough from
the conflict over Tarawa, but the incoming fire proved that effort to be futile.
Needing to get out of the enemy’s line of fire, he attempted a last-ditch effort and
pitched the craft’s nose towards the earth of a nearby island.
Just before a terrible noise filled his ears and his craft fell apart, he glimpsed the
sun shining off the golden sands of the unknown island.
When Brenner finally came to, he found himself surrounded by pieces of his Hellcat, most
of the metal frame torn apart by the Zero fighter that had been following him.
In a daze, he stepped out of the destroyed craft, but as his body and mind started to
become aware of what had happened, pain started to radiate from every part of his body.
In an instant, he could feel the shattered bone of his wrist, the gash in his lower leg,
and the small shards of shrapnel embedded in his arm.
He had been trained in basic first aid, but the gushing wound and his useless wrist were
more than he felt capable of fixing, especially as he threatened to slip out of consciousness.
With what strength he had, he rummaged through the wreckage for the kit.
The situation was grim, but Brenner refused to give up.
How he survived the first night was a miracle, but he was far from in the clear.
The island was quiet, and the sounds of war were nowhere to be found.
Even within the first day, food would be an issue if infection of his wounds didn’t
take him out first.
The thoughts fluttered through his mind, pushed aside by only one thought – that of his
mother, devastated at the news of her son’s death.
It was an image Brenner used to keep pushing.
Even as hunger weakened him further during his second day stranded and his fourth day
was spent cutting the infection from his leg, he used the thought to press on.
He ate what vegetation he found, drank the condensation from leaves, and waited.
By day five, his body was ready to quit and as his eyes struggled to remain open, he heard
something that sounded impossibly familiar.
As it came again, he felt reenergized one last time.
The cargo ship had been en route to Pearl Harbor from the Marshall Islands after Battle
of Tarawa ended when its crew spotted the smoke rising from the Hellcat wreckage.
Though an engine malfunction caused them to lose several days and the smoke had since
dissipated, captain’s orders were to still investigate.
When Brenner was brought on board, he was close to death, but his rescuers kept him
grounded and nursed him until a proper hospital could care for him.
Though he didn’t return to war, the young pilot supported his troops at Pearl Harbor
until the Japanese surrendered in 1945.
Stranded in the middle of the Pacific on an unknown island, how possible would it be for
an amateur pilot, especially one as injured as Brenner, to survive for an entire week?
Surely, he’d have rations to eat and some survival training, but would it be enough
to make this tale believable?
Leave a comment telling us what you think and remember your prior answers - because
it’s time for the big reveal.
Are you ready to find out if you can decipher between fact or fiction?
Let’s look back at tonight's three stories and find out which were born from reality
and which were fabrications of the imagination.
Do you recall the harrowing tale of Bethany, who fell two-miles from the sky onto the hard
ground of Panama?
Did you think this story was based on true events?
Though it may sound fantastical, it is very-much-so rooted in reality.
On December 24th, 1971, Juliane Koepcke was on LANSA Flight 508 over the Peruvian rainforest
when lightning struck the plane.
She did survive a two-mile fall and, sadly, her mother’s body was recovered days after
her own rescue.
Now, if Bethany’s story is true, then clearly Luke's tale is not that unbelievable, right?
Well if you thought our 2nd story was true, you’d be incorrect.
The horrific death of Luke’s father and his three-day chance survival in a tree never
happened.
How about our third story?
In the height of World War II, did a United States pilot really crash land on an empty
island?
While many of the stories details maybe helped it sound real, if you think this one was factual,
then unfortunately, you’re wrong.
Although plausible, there's no recorded dogfight that leads to a bruised and broken pilot being
stranded in the Marshall Islands.
How well did you do in tonight's video?
Did you look past the deception of our world and define the oft-blurred line that struggles
to separate lies from the truth?
Let us all know in the comment section below and should you find the urge to test your
perceptions again, be sure to subscribe and join us next time when we ask you to decide
what's fact... or fiction.