the 25 mo s t incred ib l e surviva l sto ries of al l tim e€¦ · that a rescue wasn't...

10/11/2019 The 25 Most Incredible Survival Stories of All Time | Outdoor Life

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SURVIVAL

The 25 Most Incredible Survival Stories of All Time

By Tim MacWelchMay 5, 2011

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The Gremlin Special PassengersUnlikely Rescuers On May 13, 1945, a U.S. Army Air Force C-47 nicknamed the "Gremlin Special" crashed into amountainside in what was then Dutch New Guinea. The plane carried 24 officers and enlisted women. Only threesurvived, Lt. John McCollom was relatively unharmed, but WAC Cpl. Margaret Hastings and Sgt. Kenneth Deckerwere badly hurt. They soon found themselves in the middle of a modern Stone Age culture still untouched by theoutside world. The natives were known cannibals, but luckily for the crash survivors, they mainly ate their enemytribe. On July 2, 1945, after having spent forty-two days in the jungle and being nursed back to health by friendlynatives, the three survivors and their rescue team escaped the island.


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Steven CallahanToughest Battle with Dehydration On the night of January 29, 1982, Steven Callahan set sail alone in his smallsailboat from the Canary Islands bound for the Caribbean. On February 5, the ship sank in a storm, leavingCallahan adrift in the Atlantic in a five-and-a-half-foot inflatable rubber raft. Naked except for a t-shirt, with onlythree pounds of food, a few pieces of gear and eight pints of water, Callahan drifted for 76 days, and over 1,800miles of ocean, before he reached land and rescue in the Bahamas. Callahan's autobiographical account of thestory, Adrift, is a gut-wrenching book that clearly details the extreme mental toughness required to survive at sea.I often cite Callahan when I teach the importance of leadership in a survival situation. Even though Callahan wasalone, his mind divided into a "Captain" character and a "crewman" character. The written log from the ordealrecords a detailed fight over the water ration. The "Captain" won the fight, the rations continued, and Callahanultimately survived.


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Aron RalstonGutsiest Escape Aron Ralston became widely known in May 2003, when he was forced to amputate his right armwith a dull knife in order to free himself from between a boulder and a rock wall. Ralston was scrambling througha canyon in Utah when a boulder shifted, pinning his arm to the canyon wall. He was alone, and no one knew howto find him. After several days, he finally walked out of the canyon, near death and minus one arm. The wholeordeal is documented in Ralston's autobiography Between a Rock and a Hard Place, and is the subject of the 2010film 127 Hours.


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The Donner Party_Worst Winter_ The Donner-Reed Party was a group of American pioneers who set out for California in a wagon train, but weredelayed by a series of mishaps that forced them to spend the winter of 1846-47 snowbound in the Sierra NevadaMountains. Some of the party resorted to cannibalism to survive, eating those who had succumbed to starvationand sickness. The group became snowed in near a pass in the high mountains in December of 1846. Their firsthelp did not arrive until the middle of February 1847. Two other rescue parties later brought food, and attemptedto bring the survivors out of the mountains. Only 48 of the original 87 members of the party lived to reachCalifornia. Survivor Virginia Reed's haunting letter to her cousin, dated May 16, 1847, praised God for saving herlife, and said, "…we have all got through and the only family that did not eat human flesh. We have everything but Idon't care for that. We have got through with our lives but don't let this letter dishearten anybody. Never take nocutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can." Pretty sound advice. Photo: Karanacs


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Slavomir RawiczLongest Hike Out Slavomir Rawicz was a cavalry officer in the Polish army when the Red Army captured himduring the German-Soviet partition of Poland in 1939. After being tortured and put on trial in Moscow, he was


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sentenced to 25 years of hard labor in a Siberian Gulag. After a year of unbearable and inhumane conditions,Rawicz and six other prisoners escaped from their labor camp in Yakutsk. The escapees marched 4,000 miles onfoot across the frozen Siberian tundra, the Gobi desert, through Tibet and over the Himalayan Mountains toBritish India. The Book The Long Walk is based on this story.


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Jan Baalsrud_Trapped Behind Enemy Lines_ In March 1943, a team of four expatriate Norwegian commandoes, including Jan Baalsrud, sailed from Englandto Nazi-occupied Norway to organize and supply the Norwegian resistance. Betrayed shortly after landing, theteam was ambushed by the Nazis, leaving Baalsrud as the lone survivor. The book We Die Alone recountsBaalsrud's incredible escape and his iron will to survive. Poorly clothed, with one foot entirely bare, and part ofhis big toe shot off, Baalsrud was relentlessly pursued by the Nazis. Surviving an avalanche, and suffering fromfrostbite and snow blindness, Baalsrud fought his way over the Norwegian mountains and tundra to a small arcticvillage. He was crippled and near death when he stumbled into the village of Mandal. The locals were willing tosave him, and help him escape back home to Sweden.

Beck Weathers_Everest Escape_ Jon Krakauer's bestseller, Into Thin Air, fleshed out many of the details of the ill-fated expeditions that left eightpeople dead, and became the definitive account of the deadliest season in the history of Mt. Everest. The mostamazing part of the story centered on Beck Weathers, who was twice abandoned and presumed to be dead.Weathers spent 18 hours in subzero temperatures in the death zone before miraculously regaining his senses and


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staggering into camp. He was suffering from severe frostbite, corneal lacerations and hypothermia, and his facewas so badly frostbitten it scarcely seemed human. Over the next year Weathers underwent ten surgeries, and hisentire right hand and most of his left were amputated. Photo: Ian Dunster

Ernest Shackleton's Expedition TeamUnlikely Survivors The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition is a compelling book about SirErnest Shackleton's failed attempt to cross Antarctica on foot just prior to the start of World War I. Before theexpedition was able to reach the continent, their ship, the Endurance, became stuck in an early ice floe in theWeddell Sea. The crew of 27 had no means of communication or hope for outside help, and remained isolated fornext 22 months. The men lived within the bowels of the Endurance for almost a year before the ice destroyed it,forcing the expedition to move out onto the frozen sea. Several months later, the expedition built sledges andmoved to Elephant Island, a rocky deserted spot of land just beyond the Antarctic Peninsula. At this point, no oneknew what happened to the expedition, or where they were. Most people assumed they had been killed. Knowingthat a rescue wasn't going to happen, Shackleton made the decision to take one of the open lifeboats and crossthe 800 miles of frigid sea to South Georgia Island where a small whaling station was located. Incredibly, helanded on the wrong side of the island and was forced to trek over the frozen mountains to reach the station.


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Hugh GlassLeft For Dead Hugh Glass was a mountain man on a fur trapping expedition led by Andrew Henry in August 1823.The expedition planned to proceed from the Missouri River, up the valley of the Grand River in present-day SouthDakota. Glass surprised a mother grizzly bear with her two cubs and sustained massive injuries. He managed tokill the bear with help from his trapping partners, Fitzgerald and Bridger, but was left badly mauled andunconscious. Expedition leader Henry was convinced that Glass would not survive his injuries. Henry asked fortwo volunteers to stay with Glass until he died, and then bury him. Bridger (then 17 years old) and Fitzgeraldstepped forward and began digging his grave. Bridger and Fitzgerald incorrectly reported to Henry that Glass haddied. Glass regained consciousness to find himself abandoned without weapons or equipment. He was sufferingfrom a broken leg and cuts on his back that exposed his ribs, and all his wounds were festering. Glass wasmutilated and alone, more than 200 miles from the nearest settlement at Fort Kiowa on the Missouri. He set hisown broken leg, wrapped himself in the bear hide his companions had placed over him as a shroud, and started tocrawl. To prevent gangrene, Glass laid his wounded back on a rotting log and let the maggots eat the dead flesh.Glass survived mostly on wild berries and roots. Reaching the Cheyenne River after six weeks of travel, hefashioned a crude raft and floated down the river, navigating using the prominent Thunder Butte landmark. Aidedby friendly natives who sewed a bear hide to his back to cover the exposed wounds, Glass eventually reached thesafety of Fort Kiowa.


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The Robertson FamilyBattered by Orcas Two hundred miles off the Galapagos Islands, a pod of killer whales rammed and destroyed theship of Dougal and Lyn Robertson on June 15, 1972. The Robertsons were set adrift in a small lifeboat with theirthree children and their friend. For 36 days the group of six survivors battled the ocean and the weather to stayalive, and eventually find rescue with the Japanese fishing trawler Toka Maru II on its way to the Panama Canal.Robertson, who had been keeping a journal in case they were rescued, recounted the ordeal in the 1973 bookSurvive the Savage Sea.


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The Whaleship Essex CrewLost at Sea The whaling ship Essex was rammed and sunk by a Sperm whale on November 20, 1820, in the PacificOcean. Twenty-one sailors were set adrift in three small whaleboats with little food or water. The sailors resortedto cannibalism and drinking urine. The boats eventually made their way to a small island, which contained fewresources. The men separated to find help, some returning to the ocean in one of their small boats. Only eight ofthe sailors lived through the ordeal, one of whom, Owen Chase (pictured) , kept a log of the events. Chase wasrescued 93 days after the Essex went down.


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John ColterGreatest Getaway John Colter was an American trapper and guide, who had helped in the Lewis and ClarkExpedition. In 1808, Blackfeet Indians captured Colter, stripped him naked and took all his possessions. After thenatives told Colter to run, the mountain man quickly realized he was the object of a "human hunt." A very swiftrunner, Colter eluded most of the group, but one man gained on him. Turning and facing the Indian, Colter killedhim with his own spear and took his blanket. By hiding in the river under a pile of logs, he was able to escape. Forthe next eleven days he walked 200 miles back to Fort Raymond with only the blanket for warmth and bark androots for food.


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Juliane KoepckeLuckiest Plane Crash Survivor Juliane Diller (born 1954 in Lima as Juliane Margaret Koepcke) is best known forbeing the sole survivor of 93 passengers and crew in the December 24, 1971, crash of LANSA Flight 508 in thePeruvian rainforest. The airplane was struck by lightning during a severe thunderstorm and exploded in mid-air.Koepcke, who was 17 years old at the time, fell thousands of feet still strapped into her seat. The thick, deep junglecanopy cushioned her fall, and she survived with only a broken collarbone, a gash to her right arm and her righteye swollen shut. Koepcke had no training or gear, but was soon able to locate a small stream, which she followedfor 9 days. She finally found a canoe and a nearby shelter, where she waited, and was soon rescued by twologgers.


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Lt. David SteevesBest Reappearing Act David Steeves, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant in the 1950s, was unjustly accused of giving aLockheed T-33A trainer jet to the USSR during the Cold War. Lieutenant Steeves was ordered to fly the jet froman Air Force Base near San Francisco, to Craig Air Force Base near Selma, Alabama on May 9, 1957. Steeves and thejet disappeared, and he was declared dead after a search turned up nothing. However, Steeves appeared out ofthe Sierra Nevada the following July, saying he parachuted after something blew up in the jet. He claimed that hehadn't eaten for two weeks, until he stumbled upon a ranger's cabin in Kings Canyon National Park, where hefound fish hooks, beans and a canned ham.


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Balloon CrashLost in the Great North December 13, 1920, Lieutenants Kloor, Hinton and Farrell of the US Navy crashed in ahydrogen balloon, deep in the Canadian wilderness. They were 20 miles from the nearest town--Moose Factory,Ontario. They traveled through the dense forest for a week, in the brutal winter cold, with little gear or food. Theyforced each other to keep going, and refused to leave any man behind, until they finally reached a Hudson Baytrading post. Photo: Robert S. Donovan


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Hiroo OnodaLongest Holdout Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, a former Japanese army intelligence officer who fought inWorld War II, did not surrender until 1974, spending almost thirty years holding out in the jungles of thePhilippines. Onoda continued his campaign well after the war ended, initially living in the mountains with threefellow soldiers. As his fellow soldiers died or surrendered, Lieutenant Onoda refused to believe the letters andnotes left for him that the war was over. He finally emerged from the jungle, 29 years after the end of World WarII, and accepted his former commanding officer's order. Onoda formally surrendered, wearing a hand-made,coconut fiber uniform, as his old uniform had long since rotted away.


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Our survival expert, Tim MacWelch, collected the 25 most incredible, unlikelyand daring survival stories of all time.

Steve FossettLuckiest Fall Two-thirds of the way into his fourth attempt to collect the $1 million prize for circumnavigating theglobe solo in a helium balloon, adventurer Steve Fossett ran headlong into a storm over the Coral Sea. Fossettdecided to try sailing his vessel, The Solo Spirit, over the storm. At 30,000 feet in the air, the hail shredded themylar skin of The Solo Spirit and Fossett's passenger capsule began falling from the sky. To brace for impact,Fossett lay across the bench of the capsule and awaited his fate. Shockingly, when the remnants of The Solo Spiritsplashed down, Fossett was completely unharmed. As the passenger capsule filled with water, he scrambled outwith a life raft, and was rescued 10 hours later.

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the 25 mo s t incred ib l e surviva l sto ries of al l tim e€¦ · that a rescue wasn't...

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