The 5 most extreme survival situations people have been stuck in

Simply being in a survival situation would imply that you are stuck somehow, but there’s a big difference between being lost or stranded and being in one of the situations below. Sometimes people aren’t meant to survive the situation they are in, but still manage to, so here are the five most extreme situations people have survived when all odds were against them.

Harrison okene – Underwater for 60 hours

This 29-year-old Nigerian sailor was working onboard a ship called the Jacson-4, a fishing vessel with eleven crew members. The ship was trying its luck about 12 miles off the coast of Nigeria when a powerful storm rapidly began and caused huge swells that flipped the boat upside down. At the time Harrison was below deck at the back of the ship and had the furthest to go to escape, but the violent turning of the ship in the waves made it impossible to get out before it started to sink. The ship quickly sank towards the sea bed but because it was upside down and at a steep angle, all the air inside the ship compressed into the top compartment where Harrison had managed to reach. For the next 60 hours, Harrison stacked up all the mattresses he could find and lay on top of them to escape the cold water.

(A picture taken by the divers who found Harrison)

The room itself was quite small and was only able to store enough oxygen for little more than a day, but because of the outside water pressure compressing all the air in the ship into this one room, it contained enough oxygen for him to survive long enough for the search team to dive and find him. They didn’t think anyone survived and were only there to survey the wreck, but upon hearing them, Harrison frantically hit the wall of the ship with a hammer to get their attention. It worked and scuba gear was brought to him, and he safely made it back to the surface.

Aron Ralston – Cut off his own arm with a cheap penknife

This story is one of the most famous survival stories of modern times, mostly because of the movie that was made about him called “127 Hours”. On 26 April 2003, Aron was hiking in the Bluejohn Canyon in Utah by himself when he had a life-changing accident. He didn’t tell anyone where he was going and because of overconfidence, only packed two burritos and a 330ml bottle of water, a mistake that may have led to him keeping his life. After trying to scramble down a small slot canyon he dislodged a bolder and fell down to the canyon floor a few feet below. The drop caused no injury as it wasn’t very far, but the boulder he dislodged fell onto his arm and trapped it against the canyon wall.

(Aron Ralston in the canyon he was stuck in, with his new prosthetic arm)

He had no way of calling for help and the area is very remote and doesn’t see people for days at a time, leaving him all alone with a tiny amount of food and water. For the next five days, he rationed his supplies before making the decision to cut off his own arm and try to escape. He managed to cut off his forearm using a cheap penknife and also managed to rappel 20 meters further down the canyon before walking seven miles to safety where he was met by a family on holiday who called the emergency services. The only reason he didn’t bleed to death was because of the tiny amount of water he had to drink, which led to his blood thickening enough to not gush out the wound.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi – Caught in the blast of two atomic bombs

Towards the end of the Second World War, the US had developed nuclear weaponry and was eager to test it out on the last major Axis power of Japan. On 6 August 1945 at 8:15 am, an American bomber plane called the Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb called Little Boy on the city of Hiroshima. At the time, Tsutomu Yamaguchi was on the last part of a three-month-long business trip to the city when the bomb landed just under two miles away. He was caught on the edge of the blast but the densely packed city buildings managed to shield most of the explosion, and he escaped with damaged ear drums and a few cuts and bruises, as well as being temporarily blinded by the flash. The city’s train station was untouched by the explosion and after spending the night in a shelter, Yamaguchi boarded a train and headed back to his family and his home city of Nagasaki.

(Tsutomu Yamaguchi shortly before he died at the age of 93)

Even though he was badly injured, he still reported for work at the headquarters of Mitsubishi three days later and was in a meeting with his boss when the second bomb hit. The atomic device known as Fat Man landed in the city of Nagasaki, and Yamaguchi was caught in a second blast, but this time he was much further away from the drop site and his workplace had thick concrete walls which stopped most of the shock wave. He suffered more cuts and bruises and was also badly burned, but knew he had to find his family who lived in the city. It turns out his wife was away from home at the time looking for medicine for him, and was able to shelter in a train tunnel along with their child. He became extremely ill with radiation poisoning but somehow made a full recovery and died at the age of 93 on January 4, 2010.

Vesna Vulović – Fell 6.31 miles without a parachute and survived

Vesna Vulović was a Serbian flight attendant who still holds the Guinness world record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute. On 26 January 1972, Vesna was working onboard a passenger plane (the Jat McDonnell Douglas DC-9) when a bomb hidden in a briefcase exploded at an altitude of 10,160 m (33,330 ft; 6.31 miles). The plane was ripped to pieces midair and quickly broke into smaller chunks, sucking the 28 passengers and crew out of the cabin and falling to their deaths. Vesna was trapped in the tail section of the plane behind a food chart which fell in another direction from the rest of the plane, but it didn’t take long for Vesna to break free and get sucked out of the plane into an open free fall.

(Vesna Vulović back in her flight attendant days)

She fell the entire 6.31 miles to the ground and presumably landed with quite a thud, leaving her with numerous broken bones and a badly fractured skull. She spent a few days in a coma before regaining consciousness and beginning her long road to recovery which included being paralyzed in both her legs, but luckily she regained control and was able to walk again. She went on to fully recover apart from some minor nerve damage and lived a long life, but claims she has no memory of the crash and the last thing she could remember was serving guests on the plane, then suddenly waking up in hospital two weeks later.

Chris Gursky – Hanging on for life for 3 minutes

On the first day of his vacation in Switzerland, Gursky decided that doing some sightseeing from the view of a hang glider would be the best way to go about it. He arrived at the launch site and went through all the safety protocols, but his pilot forgot the most important part of the experience, which was attaching him to the glider. As soon as the glider took off on its steep launch hill, Gursky found himself quickly shot into the air as the glider rapidly gained height, but something was terribly wrong and he wasn’t being supported by his harness. It only took a few seconds for them both to realize what had happened but by then they were already far too high for him to let go. The glider continued to gain height and the pilot had no choice but to make an emergency landing at a site almost 3 minutes away. Gursky managed to hold on for the whole trip and landed hard in a field, leaving him with a badly broken wrist and a torn ligament in his bicep from holding on too long. For some comparison of how hard this is, various street entertainers and fairs have a challenge where you can win money by hanging from a bar for 100 seconds, and the hosts can go for days between people completing the challenge, but I guess Gursky had more motivation than someone visiting a fairground.

The good thing about this story is the whole thing was captured on camera, so here’s the clip: