Extreme Survival

There's an interesting show on Animal Planet called "I Shouldn't Be Alive" which details instances of survival in extreme situations in which most people would die. Often, the people featured in each episode survived not only because of their own intellect and instincts but also due to pure luck.

One man ended up in the middle of the ocean off of Costa Rica after inclement weather forced him and his friends to abandon the plane that was taking them out for a skydiving session. What ended up saving him in part was a piece of tree trunk that floated towards him. It allowed him to float, even fall asleep for a period of time, in the middle of the ocean, and overall save at least a little bit of his energy. Otherwise, he might have been dead when he was discovered by passing fisherman. Another interesting aspect of his story was how he flipflopped back and forth between wanting to die and feeling the urge to survive. His first hour in the water, he hoped that a shark would eat him and put him out of his misery. Drowning did not strike his fancy whatsoever. However, afterward he was gripped by an unshakable desire to survive and evade death. Then, after 24 hours in the ocean, severely dehydrated, hallucinating, and lacking even an ounce of energy, he resigned himself once again to his fate. Luckily, it was right then that he was saved by the fisherman. Luck came to his rescue again.

Another woman was a competitive athlete in the area of extreme sports. One day in winter while running in the badlands of Utah, she slipped and fell 20 feet, shattering her pelvis. Even so, she attempted to drag herself out of the canyon using only her forearms, an impossible task to be sure. She made little progress, and she was bleeding internally. She also knew that she could not afford to fall asleep once the sun set, despite extreme fatigue, because she would lose consciousness and die from hypothermia. She managed to stay alive throughout the cold nights that would have otherwise killed her by doing one crunch every five seconds until daylight. Imagine doing about 4,500 crunches with a broken pelvis and internal bleeding, no food and water, and unbearable cold. On top of that, she wasn't even able to urinate, since the urine would freeze in the cold night and also inevitably lead to hypothermia. What eventually saved her? Well, there was no way she was crawling out of the canyon on her forearms. What ended up saving her was a combination of factors: even though she was single and lived alone, her family realized she was missing and alerted the police. They sent out a search and rescue team. Her second saving grace was her dog, who had been her companion since he was a puppy. As she felt her life drawing to a close, her last hope lay in her dog. She begged him to go and find help. It was unclear to her whether he really understood what she was saying, but nonetheless he ran off. Not only did he manage to find his way out of the canyon and to the search party, but he succeeded in attracting their attention with his strange agitated behavior so that they followed him. He led them right to his master, and they saved her just in time.

A third extraordinary story focused on a British ex-soldier who decided to set out alone to climb the highest mountain in Romania. His original goal was to scale it in one day, since he was in peak physical condition. Clearly he didn't expect to fall victim to not one but two avalanches. He managed to avoid the first one without much harm, but the second one caused him to fall quite a great distance. He broke his leg, shattered his pelvis, and was also bleeding internally. Despite his horrific state, he needed to drag himself down the mountain and to the country road at the bottom. He had no food and water, and he couldn't drink the snow--because of its frozen state, it would dangerously lower his body temperature, risking death by hypothermia. Like the woman in Utah, he knew he couldn't risk falling asleep either, since his body would take over and he would lose consciousness. He made himself stay awake thinking about anything and everything, but mostly his family. During the day, he had to crawl at a snail's pace, and his body was in constant and excruciating pain. At one point, he felt that he didn't care to live anymore, and stopped. He must have fallen asleep, something that would have normally killed him. Why didn't he die? Good fortune had smiled upon him, and blanketed him in freshly fallen snow which insulated him, keeping him alive. When he awoke, he couldn't believe it, but he still felt hopeless. He had miles to go to reach the nearest town. Even though his mind had shut off and he had all but lost his will to live, his body urged him on. At that point, his body was a separate entity and it was bent on saving itself, even if the rest of him didn't care anymore. Somehow, he managed to make it to the road where he had been dropped off by a taxi two days before. He couldn't walk, and crawling on his forearms would take too long, since he was also bleeding to death both internally and externally. He found a large stick and used it as a crutch, making his way down the road until he came to a fork. He had no idea which road to take. He chose one, and felt elation when he saw a house in the distance, only to discover upon closer inspection that it was an abandoned barn. A blow like that would be hard to recover from, but this man had such a strong will that he turned back around, hobbled back to the fork in the road, took the other path, and finally made it to an inhabited house.

It's hard to believe there are people who have survived such adverse physical circumstances. It's a true testament to the human will to survive and the power of instincts, as well as a lesson to appreciate every day. I imagine that these people feel they were given a second chance at life, a feeling that most of us will never experience, and it must make them examine every day in a different light--a more appreciative light.