Real people who survived the impossible
Summary
Top 20 Real people who survived the impossible. For a long time, people have been fascinated with heroes who’ve somehow survived great danger and brutal hardship. But when it comes to more modern survivors of extreme adversity, there’s no need […]
Top 20 Real people who survived the impossible. For a long time, people have been fascinated with heroes who’ve somehow survived great danger and brutal hardship. But when it comes to more modern survivors of extreme adversity, there’s no need to fictionalize. Stoic real-life heroes have endured mind-boggling traumas and hardships. They are the luckiest people in the world. This 2020 we are featuring the top 20 real people who survived the impossible.
Video: Real people who survived the impossible
Aron Ralston
Climber Aron Ralston found himself trapped alone in Utah canyon and had to perform and unbelievable DIY surgery to save his life. For six days, this unusual person kept himself alive with fierce self-control and a conviction that only logical thought could let him survive. He got trapped with an 800 pound boulder crushing his arm up against the stone wall. Five days progressed and the rations and water were depleted. Using the boulder for leverage, he was able to snap the bone in his wrist and then with a very dull survival knife managed to slice through muscle tendon. He caught this rare footage on camera and this went viral.
Video: Real people who survived the impossible
Lyndi Harding
This lucky person was eager to try skydiving during her trip to California with friends. But after leaping out of the plane at a heart stopping height of 8,500 feet, Lyndi’s parachute had become tangled in the reserve. Lyndi continued to fall for 40 seconds and at 70 miles per hour until she finally struck the ground. Miraculously, she only sustained two fracture ribs, a punctured lung, and a cracked nose and chipped tooth.
Holly Dunn
Angel Resendiz was a man who had already killed 6 people and would continue to kill even more. Holly Dunn and her boyfriend Chris Maier were far away from a party and wound up chatting near some train tracks. Resendiz approached and threatened them with an ice pick. Then tied two of the up only to kill Chris Maier with a 50 pound rock to the head. Holly Dunn was the only survivor among the 15 people Resendiz murdered over the span of 15 years.
Paul Rosalie
The Discovery channel was airing a special “how to survive” about anacondas featuring filmmaker, Paul Rosalie wearing a “snake suit” and voluntarily being swallowed by an anaconda. He slathered himself in pig’s blood, drew the attention of the massive snake and was immediately coiled in its grip. Rosalie had panicked after he felt his arm breaking and requested for the crew to detach himself from the huge anaconda. Only part of his head went through the snake’s mouth but had his stun gone further, Paul may not have survived.
Ken Henderson
You have watched these two best friends on creepy pasta, Ken Henderson and Ed Coen, embarked on fishing trip in the Gulf of Mexico when without any known cause the 30 foot long boat was sinking very fast. There was no time to call for help over radio nor could they prevent the boat’s systems from failing. Before they knew it, the boat had sunk and they were both stranded for 30 hours in the ice cold gulf. After 50 miles of swimming, Henderson made it and could call his wife.
Truman Duncan
This railroad switchman had tumbled off the front of a moving train car and was dragged underneath the train. His body was basically sliced clean in half. He was separated from both legs and a kidney. However, he managed to call 911 on his cellphone and hold out for the 45 minute wait and survived the 23 surgeries that followed after the accident. Indeed one to be amazed survival story!
Paul Templer
Templer put himself in danger through hippo attack. After Templer’s partner guide was thrown into the river, he jumped in to try to save him but ended up head first inside the hippo’s giant mouth. Its giant bone crushing teeth speared through his armpits, ruptured through his back, ripped his foot, severed his arm, broke ribs and tore holes all through his torso. After a 7 hour of operation, Templer survived the brutal hippo attack. Obviously a scary true story.
Vesna Vulovic
On January 26, 1972, a Yugoslav Airlines DC-9 departed from Copenhagen for Belgrade with 28 passengers and crew. At an altitude of 33,000 feet, a bomb in the cargo section, planted by the Ustashe Croatian separatist group, exploded. The plane disintegrated and crashed on the mountains. In what must be one of the greatest survival stories of all time, stewardess Vesna Vulovic survived the 33,000 foot descent sitting on the tail of the plane.
Frane Selak
Luck has always been on his side or vice versa for Croatian music teacher Frane Selak who is well known around the world for as many fatal accidents as spectacular escapes. You may know this through bright side or watch mojo. The first of his numerous near-death experiences began on a cold January day in 1962, when Selak was on a train to Dubrovnik: it suddenly derailed into an icy river, killing 17 passengers. He managed to escape with a broken arm, minor scratches and bruises.
Andes Survivors
On Friday the 13th of October, 1972, a Uruguayan Air Force twin turboprop Fairchild FH-227D was flying over the Andes carrying Stella Maris College’s “Old Christians” rugby union team from Montevideo, Uruguay, to play a match in Santiago, Chile. Twelve people died in the crash. Survivors not only had to withstand the hunger and the fearful Mountains, but also 30 degree-below-zero temperatures during the night. Two of them decided to cross the huge mountains to reach Chile. On 22nd of December of 1972, after being isolated for 72 days, the World found out and knew there were 16 survivors that beat Death in the Andes Mountains.
Anatoli Bugorski
As a researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, Bugorski used to work with the largest Soviet particle accelerator. The left half of Bugorski’s face swelled up beyond recognition, and over the next several days started peeling off, showing the path that the proton beam had burned through parts of his face, his bone, and the brain tissue underneath. As it was believed that about 500 to 600 rads is enough to kill a person, Bugorski was taken to a clinic in Moscow where the doctors could observe his expected demise. However, Bugorski survived and even completed his Ph.D.
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Roy Sullivan
Roy Sullivan was a Virginia Forest Ranger who had an amazing attraction to lightning or rather lightning had an attraction to him. Over his 36-year career as a ranger, Sullivan was struck by lightning seven times – and survived each jolt, but not unscathed. His seventh strike put him in the Guinness Book of World Records. His wife was also struck once, when a sudden storm welled up as she and her husband were out hanging wash on the back yard clothesline.
Joe Simpson
Joe Simpson and Simon Yates were the first to scale the west peak of the Siula Grande, in the Peruvian Andes. Disaster struck on the way down, and Yates was forced to let a badly wounded Simpson drop 100 feet into an ice crevasse. The amazing fact was Simpson survived the fall and spent three days crawling back to base camp. He was indeed one lucky person who survived where his friend did not.
Robert Evans
An early morning of September 2008, 46-year-old homeless man Robert Evans had a hit-and-run car accident, and while walking back from the hospital to his camp, he was knocked off a narrow railroad bridge into a creek by a train, surviving the second accident in seven hours. Police said Evans was hit by the railing of a stairway on the side of the train. The railroad bridge is only wide enough to accommodate the train tracks and is not intended for pedestrians or other traffic.
Mauro Prosperi
Prosperi, a keen endurance runner, took part in the 1994 Marathon des Sables in Morocco. Part way through the 6-day 233 kilometer event a sandstorm caused Prosperi to lose his way. He ended up disoriented and ran in the wrong direction, ultimately running several hundred kilometres into Algeria. After 36 hours he ran out of food and water. He survived by drinking his own urine and eating bats resident in an abandoned mosque and the occasional snake found in the desert.
Helen Klaben
She wanted to travel from Fairbanks to Seattle, and decided to save some money by flying with an amateur pilot, 42-year-old Ralph Flores. It turned out to be a fateful choice, when Flores’ plane crashed on Feb. 4, 1963, in a snowstorm in a remote part of the Canadian wilderness. The passenger and pilot suffered broken bones and other injuries, but they were alive. Fortunately, both passenger and pilot were overweight, and could survive off their body fat for another 42 days, until an aircraft finally spotted them.
Poon Lim
In November 1942, a British merchant ship, the Benlomond, left Cape Town, South Africa, on a voyage across the Atlantic to pick up cargo at Paramibo in Dutch Guiana, now the nation of Suriname. But when the ship was 750 miles off the South American coast, it was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sank. The only survivor was a 24-year-old Chinese seaman named Poon Lim who’d jumped overboard. He improvised a fishing tackle to catch more food. Lim drifted for 133 days, until he was rescued by Brazilian fishermen 10 miles off the coast.
Louis Zamperini
On May 27, 1943, a U.S. Army Air Corps B-24 on a rescue mission in the Pacific malfunctioned and crashed into the sea. Three members of the crew took refuge on a raft. Tail gunner Sgt. Francis McNamara died after 33 days, but the other two — 2nd Lt. Russell Phillips and Lt. Louis Zamperini, a distance runner who had competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, survived on fish and rainwater for 47 days. Then they were found by Japanese forces.
Slavomir Rawicz
A young Polish cavalry officer, was called up to defend his country against the Nazi and Soviet invasions that started World War II. He was captured by Soviet forces, and sent to Moscow in 1939. There, he was convicted on a trumped-up charge of espionage, and sentenced to 25 years of hard labor. He survived a brutal trip to Siberia, in which he had to ride in the back of an open cattle truck in sub-zero temperatures and then march hundreds of miles in chains.
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Genelle Guzman-McMillan
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, she was at work in her office on the 64th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower, when the building was struck by American Airlines Flight 11. When she descended to the 13th floor, Guzman-McMillan bent over to take off her shoe, and then suddenly, a wall collapsed on her. Her feet were pinned, with her head trapped between two pieces of concrete. The only thing she could move was her left hand. She opened her eyes, but everything around her was black. She was the final living person rescued from the wreckage.
Who is the toughest survivor? Whose fact did you find the most interesting! Let us know in the comment section.