5 Times People's Lives Turned Into Insane Survival Stories
by Pauli Poisuo
Imagine walking down the street on a perfectly normal day, when suddenly, your life turns into an action movie and you’re wrestling a murderous giraffe before evading the killer robots that are closing in when you realize that you’re actually in a survival movie, and this escape scene is going to last a lot longer.
Sounds weird, right? It is, but not too far off from what these people went through when their lives suddenly switched gears, and turned into amazing, blood-curdling survival stories.
A Driving Error Turns Into A 72-Year-Old’s Survival Nightmare
What’s the worst wrong turn you’ve ever taken? Unless your answer includes a thousand yard stare and the words “Silent Hill,” chances are it can’t hold a torch to Ann Rodgers, a 72-year-old Tucson native who only wanted to refuel her car, but found herself in the kind of rural terror that some coked-up Hollywood executive might call “Golden Girls meets The Revenant.”
Rodgers and her dog (who survived) were on their way to Phoenix, AZ to have a birthday bash. Unfortunately, she found herself a little light on gas, took a wrong exit, and got hopelessly lost. This wouldn’t have been a terrible thing by itself, but then her car did run out of fuel ... in the middle of Gila County, an area that has very bad cell phone service but overcompensates for this with tons of unforgiving wilderness. She was not discovered for nine days.
Your average septuagenarian in this situation would usually have survival odds similar to that of a Werther’s Original on Bingo Night. But Rodgers decided that normal was stupid and decided to go rogue, leaving the safety of her car and trekking across the landscape, climbing ridgeline after ridgeline in her quest to find cell phone reception. When this proved to be futile, she unleashed Plan B, and started living off the land while leaving hints for rescuers.
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“Literally any object other than land would be a clue at this point.”
And those rescuers were definitely searching. They found her car four days in, but since she wasn’t there, the search had a lot of ground to cover -- which, coupled with the fact that little old ladies and their dogs rarely go full-on Bear Grylls (or better than?), must have made for a pretty depressing mission. Imagine, then, the surprise of the White Mountain Apache Tribe Game and Fish officer who found Rodgers’ very much alive dog jogging around an area called Canyon Creek. Then, a helicopter crew spotted a large “HELP” sign fashioned from sticks and stones. A close examination of the sign revealed a handwritten note, in which Rodgers discussed her lack of supplies and the direction she was heading. There they found an abandoned shelter, because she built enough shelters to have one to abandon, and finally found the woman herself, standing beside a signal fire in surprisingly good spirits for someone who has survived on plants, berries and creek water for well over a week and dodging storms and wildlife and whatever else nature threw at her.
To give you an idea of just how badass Rodgers is, survival instructor Cody Lundin said that her case is “very rare, statistically abnormal and freakish,” and that “[even] trained survivalists are at risk when they face conditions similar to those that Rodgers faced.”
Damn.
A Bunch Of Kids Find Themselves In A Real-Life Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies, on the other hand, is not very Rodgersesque in its depiction of what happens when humans get stranded. The stranded kids in the William Golding novel start kind of strong, but proceed to wreck the entirety of their island, and each other. People die. Man reveals his inner darkness. British officers scoff at things. Weeping ensues. Pretty uncool, all in all.
But what if we told you that in 1965, a real-life version of this scenario took place, only this time, every single person involved was awesome? According to historian Rutger Bregman, who painstakingly tracked down the story, the real-life Lord of the Flies didn’t involve a plane crash and a large group. Instead, it was six kids from the islands of Tonga who were between 13 and 16 years old and bored with school so they stole a boat with plans to travel to Fiji. Instead, they fell asleep and happened into a storm which ruined (not) their boat, and after eight days of famished drifting they ended up marooned on a small, rocky isle called ‘Ata.
The boys were hungry, thirsty, and low on supplies. However, instead of painting their faces and waging war on each other, they started cooperating. They found food in coconuts, fruit, fish, birds and eggs. When their attempts to build a raft failed, they started slowly shaping their island base to their liking, crafting shelters, rain collecting systems and a food garden. They started and ended their days with a collective song and prayer. When one of them fell down a cliff and broke his leg, the others painstakingly rescued him, did what they could to stabilize his leg, and then gave him crap for not pulling his own weight because that's how teenage boys show affection.
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Teenagers are jerks, which you know as a former teenager yourself.
It’s a good thing that the kids got along so well, because in the end, they had to survive the island for some 15 months. Well, we say survive -- when the captain who found and rescued them went to check out their accommodations, he discovered a surprisingly advanced settlement that included amenities such as a badminton court, a gym, and a permanent fire. One of the kids had even built a DIY guitar out of wire, coconut and driftwood.
See, amateurs approach their shipwrecks with only survival in mind. Experts make sure they can do so with plenty of fanciful recreation and the ability to pull off sweet-ass guitar solos.
A Hang-Gliding Tourist Hangs On For Dear Life
When Chris Gursky decided to try hang-gliding during his vacation in Switzerland, he got exactly what he asked for, assuming he asked for it by making a wish on a monkey’s paw. Thanks to an incident Gursky rather understatedly calls his “Swiss Mishap,” he very much ended up hang... ing on to dear life. Dun dun dunn. [We need to talk about these jokes, Pauli. -Ed.]
Gursky was set to fly with a local pilot, who unfortunately forgot to, you know, strap his passenger into the flimsy apparatus that would soon send them both careening over the unforgiving landscape. As such, the moment they took flight from their high vantage point, Gursky realized that the only thing keeping him from making a high-speed acquaintance with geography was his own grip strength. This is not an optimal situation when you’re majestically soaring over a mountainside.
There are several things that can go wrong in a scenario like this, and all of them involve some form (amount?) of splattering. Fortunately, both Gursky and the pilot decided to save terrified pants-filling for a later time, and switched to action hero mode in glorious unison. Swinging in the wind, Gursky somehow managed to hold on to the glider’s axle, the pilot’s harness, and eventually, the pilot’s leg. Meanwhile, the pilot somehow managed to secure Gursky’s grip with one hand while bringing the glider down safely and quickly with the other. This was pretty instrumental, because even though the ordeal only took two or so minutes, real humans kind of suck at hanging compared to their action movie counterparts, so Gursky was slowly slipping pretty much the whole time.
Oh, did we mention there’s three terrifying minutes of video? Because there totally is.
Gursky’s grip ultimately held until the pilot made it to a safe-ish landing site, and he survived the ordeal with just minor injuries of the “broken wrist” variety. He didn’t even really hold a grudge against the pilot, thanks to the insane moves the latter pulled to get them to safety. Somehow, Gursky didn’t even develop a hatred toward the very art of hang-gliding. As the man puts it: "I will go hang-gliding again as I did not get to enjoy my first flight." A rogue if we ever saw one.
A Man's Cozy Alaskan Cabin Becomes Home To A Terrifying Three Week Struggle
As anyone who knows anything about Alaska can readily attest, it doesn’t rank too high on the list of greatest places to get stranded in the middle of winter. To survive just one night in the snowy hells of the region without a shelter would require specialized equipment, a handful of small miracles, and at least four weather-themed superpowers.
Despite a name that suggests otherwise, Tyson Steele is no superhero. Yet, he braved the Alaskan wilderness for 23 days with little to no equipment. In the autumn of 2019, he’d purchased a remote, rural hut from a Vietnam vet, and had been living there for a few months with his Labrador retriever, Phil. One cold night in late December, he woke up to discover that the roof was an inferno. He managed to save himself and some outdoor gear, but unfortunately, Phil does not make another appearance in this story.
Pixabay
We’re not crying SHUT UP.
Getting stranded in the Alaskan wilderness with little equipment was one thing for Steele, but losing his beloved pup was completely another. “I have no words for what sorrow — it was just … just a scream,” he describes his reaction. “Just a visceral, not angry, not sad — just, like, that’s all I could express.”
Having grieved the loss of his furry friend with the mother of all primal screams, Steele turned his attention to the situation at hand. He managed to salvage a wood stove and some canned food. Then, he made a snow cave for a makeshift shelter. Finally, he dug a large “SOS” in the snow and filled the letters with soot. And waited. And waited. And waited.
Eventually, Steele’s non-dog loved ones noticed that they hadn’t heard from him in a while, so they alerted authorities and the Alaska State Troopers decided to pay his homestead a visit. Against all odds, they didn’t find a man-sicle, but a very calm, very Tom-Hanks-in-Cast Away Steele pacing a circle in the snow, waving at their helicopter. And while he’s super happy that he got rescued, he says that he could easily do it all over again – he just really misses Phil.
We said shut up.
A Short Fishing Trip Turns Into 436 Days Lost At Sea
Sometimes, we come across a story that’s so impressive, there’s no room for jokes because all the available words are already filled with sheer badassitude. Like this one.
436 days. 6,700 miles. That’s how long José Salvador Alvarenga spent at sea, and how far from his home he was eventually discovered. Those are some pretty impressive numbers, especially for a guy who only meant to be at sea for less than a couple of days.
In November 2012, Alvarenga and a crewmate set out to sea for a quick fishing trip off the coast of Mexico. A sudden storm soon threw these plans in disarray, leaving the experienced Alvarenga and his novice companion struggling in a boat that the waves were slowly filling with sea water. While they were only two hours away from the land, Alvarenga’s crewmate was in full panic, their GPS was wrecked, they had no anchor, and Alvarenga himself could only contact his boss to inform him of the situation and request a rescue. His last broadcast words to the shore were: “Come now, I am really getting f----- out here.”
He wasn’t wrong.
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And he was about to become more right by the day.
Alvarenga and his crewmate tried everything to keep afloat. They dumped their catch, and rigged a makeshift sea anchor “tail” to bring stability. But the winds kept blowing them further out to sea, the engine and radio had died, and the cold forced them to construct a makeshift shelter by tipping over an icebox, where they took turns catching their breath and trying to get warm.
Nevertheless, they persevered. Alvarenga taught himself to fish by sticking his hand in the water and waiting for a fish to come within grabbing distance. They caught the occasional sea turtle and bird, and even had sporadic flying fish land in their boat. They drank turtle blood and urine, and when it rained, they deployed a system for collecting rainwater. They scavenged plastic from the sea, and used that to MacGyver even more survival equipment.
Sometimes, things didn’t work super well, like when Alvarenga was so hungry that he resorted to eating his own fingernails, and snatching jellyfish out of the water and shoving them straight down his gullet, stinging bits and all. His friend had it even worse, and eventually, he died from the combination of … well, everything that was happening. Alvarenga says he had conversations with the body for six days, until he finally decided to strip its clothes for resources and give it a burial at sea.
Now alone and frightened for his sanity, Alvarenga kept to his survival routines, and developed a complex fantasy world in his head to keep sane as months crawled by, storms passed on, vivid hallucinations plagued him, and large container ships plowed by without noticing his tiny vessel. And then, one day, he saw a tiny Pacific atoll of the Robinson Crusoe variety. With great risk and cold calculation, he managed to steer his vessel to the shore, and managed to find a house. After 14 months of borderline impossible existence, José Salvador Alvarenga had finally made it to safety.
Now, to be clear, it’s worth noting that a lot of what you just read comes from Alvarenga himself, because he’s quite literally the only man who lived to tell the tale. He’s had his share of skeptics, and though experts and authorities have been able to confirm that the rough outline of the events seems to match his tale, there's absolutely no way to verify some of it, like whether or not he just hallucinated the live jellyfish-eating thing.
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