9. SOVIET SUBMARINE DISASTER
Russia is notorious for its secrecy and for withholding information from the public.
This is no different than during the Cold War, when the Soviets covered up
as many of their military disasters as possible. Back in 1960, the Project 613 submarine sank
900 feet (274 meters) to the bottom of the Barents Sea during a training exercise.
As the 14-man crew began some torpedo firing exercises, their first missile failed to launch.
They placed it back into its compartment and ran a check on the operating system.
Shortly thereafter, there was a massive explosion and the submarine began to sink
rapidly toward the seafloor. Fifteen minutes later, it hit the bottom.
Chaos ensued, and it was only when one crew member threatened the others with his pistol
that everyone began to cooperate with each other. Everyone put on protective suits and
escaped through a narrow torpedo shaft at the back of the submarine. The water was pitch black,
and they had to take their time rising to the surface to avoid getting sick from the pressure
change. It took about three hours, and the crew encountered harsh seas once they got to the top.
One survivor named Chayim Sheynin spent three months in a compression chamber,
where gradually decreasing amounts of pressure
were applied to his lungs. After that, he spent another 7 months in the hospital.
In 2006 he shared his story with the entire world on ABC.
Sheynin recalled that his superiors had told him not to breathe a word of the disaster
to anyone. More than 55 years later, he was finally breaking orders.
8. TRAPPED IN AN AIR BUBBLE
Three days after a tugboat sank off the Nigerian coast in 2003,
a survivor was the last thing recovery divers expected to encounter. After all,
the whole purpose of a recovery effort is to find bodies, not living humans. Much to their surprise,
they found a man alive and peddling water in a small pocket of air inside the wreck, which sat
100 feet (30 meters) below the water’s surface. The survivor, 29-year-old Harrison Odjegba Okene,
had spent 72 terrifying hours trapped in the air bubble that had saved his life!
But Okene knew that the air supply would run out. Can you imagine?! In a desperate race against the
clock, and after noticing a diver’s light in the water, he tried to swim to the rescuer,
but failed to catch their attention. Lacking other options, Okene returned to the air pocket,
where the carbon dioxide he exhaled, and the frigid waters, increasingly threatened his life.
He eventually saw another chance to catch up with a diver
and was successful on his second try. Okene tapped on the man’s shoulder, and at first,
the rescuer thought that he had bumped into a corpse. But he realized Okene was alive
and started working to get him to safety. The survivor had to spend 60 hours in a
decompression chamber to avoid the ill effects of coming up from deep water too quickly.
Sadly, the rest of the crew didn’t make it. And as if he wasn’t already going through enough,
superstitious locals accused Okene of using black magic to stay alive! He was
so traumatized from the ordeal, he vowed never to return to sea and found work as
a chef on dry land. In a later interview with the Associated Press, he explained that he was
still haunted by the ordeal, and that he was plagued by nightmares and painful memories.
7. SELF-AMPUTATION FOR SURVIVAL
During a solo descent down Utah’s remote Bluejohn Canyon in 2003, 27-year-old Aron Ralston’s arm got
pinned against the canyon wall by a dislodged 800-pound (363 kg) boulder. He had no way of
calling for help and hadn’t told anyone in his life about his hiking plans. For five days,
Ralston tried desperately to free his arm while rationing what little food and water he had. But
he remained stuck. Convinced he was going to die, he videotaped his final goodbyes to his family and
carved his name, date of birth, and the date he thought he was going to die into the canyon wall.
But Ralston made it through the night, motivated by visions of himself
playing with his future child. In the fantasy, he had a partially severed arm. By the next day,
his trapped arm had started decomposing. Ralston knew he had to act quickly if he
was going to survive. Using the force of the boulder, he broke his ulna and radius;
then, he cut off his forearm using a cheap multi-tool with a dull blade.
He stemmed the bleeding as best he could with a makeshift tourniquet,
then rappelled down a 65-foot (20 meters) cliff and began the 8-mile (13 km) walk to his vehicle.
Along the way, he encountered a family who summoned help. Four hours after hacking his own
arm off, and after losing 40 pounds (18 kg) and 25 percent of his blood volume, Ralston was rescued.
He wrote about the harrowing experience in his appropriately-titled New York
Times bestseller “Between a Rock and a Hard Place.”
Do you think you would be brave enough to cut off your own arm if it meant saving your life?
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6. RESCUED FROM THE HIMALAYAS
In early 2017, a young Taiwanese couple named Liang Sheng Yueh
and Liu Chen Chun traveled to Nepal to hike in the Himalayan Mountains.
They were last seen leaving for a hike in northern Dhading despite heavy snow.
The couple failed to call their families in Taiwan the next day as promised.
A few days later, relatives contacted Nepalese authorities and asked for help finding Liang
and Liu. Police launched a search, which was disrupted by snowfall and avalanches.
Finally, 47 days after the couple disappeared, rescuers found them on a ledge. Sadly, Liu had
passed away three days earlier, leaving Liang on his own to fight for survival
as he slept near her corpse. The 21-year-old had lost 66 pounds (30 kg). He was riddled with lice
and one of his feet was covered in maggots, but he was otherwise, for the most part, okay.
Liang told rescuers that he and Liu were trying to find a village during a snowstorm when they
slipped and fell over the waterfall, landing on the ledge. Unable to climb up or down from it,
they were stuck on the platform at an altitude of 8,530 feet (2,600 meters). For
the first two weeks, they survived on what little food they had in their bag.
After that, they subsisted on just water and salt.
While Liu’s death was certainly tragic,
finding Liang alive after so long was nothing short of a miracle.
5. THE LYKOV FAMILY
When Russia became communist, the Bolshevik government started persecuting people for
their religion. In 1936, a Russian Orthodox couple named Karp and Akulina Lykov fled their
hometown in southern Siberia with their two children, Savin and Natalia, in tow.
They built a ramshackle hut several thousand feet up a mountainside in the remote Siberian forest,
150 miles (241 km) from the nearest town. While living in isolation and entirely off the land,
Karp and Akulina had two more children named Dmitry and Agafia.
Living in the wilderness brought its fair share of tragedy to the family. In 1961,
their crops were killed in a frost, forcing them to eat shoes and bark to stay alive.
Akulina died from starvation -- it was a sacrifice she made so that her kids might survive.
While flying over the area in a helicopter in 1978, a group of geologists spotted the
Lykovs’ home. They were shocked, since they were far from the nearest town.
The family insisted on staying at their makeshift home of nearly 50 years,
which was described by its discoverers as cramped, cold, filthy, and musty. It wasn’t until then
that the Lykovs learned that Stalin was dead and that the Soviet Union had become a world power.
In 1981, two of the children died from kidney failure and another perished from pneumonia. Karp
died in 1988, leaving Agafia to fend for herself. As of 2019, she was still living at the site,
despite being of old age and suffering from cartilage deterioration in her lower extremities.
By then, she had built a decent shack and had goats and chickens.
4. LOST (AND FOUND) AT SEA
Steven Callahan is an experienced sailor, naval architect, and inventor who designed and built
his own boat, the Napoleon Solo. Acting on a childhood dream, he sailed the vessel alone across
the Atlantic in 1982. During the return voyage, a whale or an equally large and powerful object
slammed into the boat, tearing a hole in the hull and causing water to flood in.
Knowing that the Napoleon Solo was going to sink, Callahan gathered what supplies he could
and boarded his inflatable life raft. He only had a few days’ worth of food and water and was alone
in the middle of the ocean, 800 miles (1,287 km) west of the Canary Islands but drifting eastward.
Callahan caught fish with a spear gun and used a solar still to produce a pint
of fresh drinking water every day. In the coming weeks, he passed by numerous ships,
but none of them saw him. As he drifted into tropical waters,
he suffered from dehydration, saltwater sores, and constant hunger and thirst.
At one point, Callahan’s raft ripped, and he struggled to keep
the raft afloat. He was about to give up and let things take their natural course,
but his will to live kicked in, and he managed to fix the raft.
Finally, after 76 days lost at sea and drifting some 1,800 miles (2,900 km), some fishermen
spotted Callahan in the waters off the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. He had lost a third of his
weight, was too weak to walk properly, and was covered in sores, but was mostly okay
and left the hospital that day. In the years following his rescue, he designed
an inflatable life raft that’s better equipped for long-term survival than the one he was stuck with.
3. REAL-LIFE CASTAWAY
One day in November 2012, a fisherman named Salvador Alvarenga set out to go
fishing in a 25-foot (7.6 meters) boat with a 23-year-old coworker named Ezequiel Córdoba.
They departed from Mexico’s west coast with plans to spend 30 hours out on the Pacific.
A five-day-long storm blew the small boat off-course, damaging its motor
and electronics. With no anchor, sails, or oars, the boat drifted aimlessly.
The men were forced to dump the 1,100 pounds (500) of fish they had caught, and a lot of
their equipment had been damaged in the storm, leaving them with minimal food and supplies.
A search party gave up on finding them after two days.
Meanwhile, Alvarenga caught and ate fish, turtles, birds, and jellyfish with their bare hands.
They caught rainwater when they could, but mostly drank turtle blood and their own urine.
Córdoba reportedly died four months into the journey. He had given up hope of rescue and
was too grossed out to eat the raw sea creatures that Alvarenga caught. For six days, Alvarenga sat
and had conversations with Córdoba’s decomposing corpse. He eventually snapped out of his insanity
and, making good on his promise not to eat his friend’s body, threw Córdoba’s remains overboard.
In early 2014, after 438 days lost at sea, Alvarenga spotted land. He swam ashore and
encountered a couple outside their home. Unbeknownst to him, he was in the Marshall
Islands. Aside from being dehydrated and malnourished and needing help walking,
his health surprisingly hadn’t suffered too much, considering the circumstances.
2. A SOLDIER FINALLY SURRENDERS
If you ask most people, World War II ended in 1945 when Japan surrendered to the Allies.
But one Japanese intelligence officer, named Hiroo Onoda - he simply refused to believe that the war
was over. He spent the next three decades in the jungle on the Philippine island of Lubang,
relying on his guerrilla warfare skills to remain hidden and avoid capture.
Onoda was initially joined by three comrades, one of whom left the jungle and returned to Japan
in 1950. That same year, another comrade was killed. The remaining man survived until 1972.
In 1974, Onoda’s brother and former commanding officer traveled to Lubang and finally convinced
him that the war had ended. Onoda later explained that he believed Tokyo’s pro-U.S.
government was scheming against him in their previous attempts to persuade him off the island.
He formally surrendered to Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos in his imperial army uniform,
cap, and sword, which were all still in good condition. Marcos pardoned Onoda for killing
as many as 30 people he mistakenly took for enemy soldiers throughout the years.
Onoda moved to Brazil and became a farmer in 1975 and returned to Japan a decade later,
where he created nature camps for children. He passed away in 2014, at the age of 91.
1. REAL-LIFE TARZAN
In 1972 during the Vietnam War, a man named Ho Van Thanh packed up his two sons and fled
civilization. He had already lost his wife and two other children to a bomb dropped by U.S. forces,
and he wanted to protect his surviving family members. For the next 40 years, the family lived
in complete isolation, relying entirely on nature to fulfill their needs. They built wooden shacks,
drank water from a nearby river, and ate fruit and meat sourced from their surroundings.
The group went undetected until 2013, when locals discovered them
living off the grid and alerted the authorities. Having long believed the family was dead,
residents were shocked. The authorities forced them to return to civilization.
Refusing to believe that the Vietnam War ended decades ago, Thanh spent every day holed up in the
corner of his room and obsessing over his desire to return to the wilderness. He died in 2017.
One of Thanh’s children, Ho Van Lang, had lived in the jungle since he was two years old.
It was all he knew. He had never seen a car,
struggled to understand the concept of electricity, and didn’t know what women are,
according to filmmaker Alvaro Cerezo, who made a documentary showcasing Lang’s life.
Lang became known for his gentle, childlike demeanor and his superb survival skills.
He now leads a productive life and is integrated into society on some level. But he struggles to
adjust well enough to completely abandon jungle life and eventually returned to living in a hut.
Thankfully, he is no longer isolated from the world and maintains regular contact
with his older brother and other community members with more mainstream lifestyles.
Thanks for watching! Do you have any incredible survival stories of your own? Let us know in the
comments below and don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already! See you next time! Bye! :)