1 most amazing survival stories in history

most of us have never found ourselves fighting for our lives-we feel very safe reading about the mistakes of adventure survivors, natural disasters and previously unimaginable shipwrecks on the sofa. This makes these incredible historical survival stories even more memorable.

1. Ernest Shackleton's 8-mile sailing trip // 1916

members of shackleton's trans-Antarctic expedition pulled a lifeboat through the snow

after the crash of Endurance, members of shackleton's trans-Antarctic expedition pulled a lifeboat through the snow. /Horton Archives/Getty Images

Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton started in 1914, and his mission is to be the first person to cross Antarctica on foot. By November 1915, his ship Endurance was crushed by sea ice, and his 27 crew members were trapped on the ice floe. In the spring of 1916, when they arrived at the uninhabited Elephant Island, shackleton decided to ask for help. He and a crew of five sailed 8 miles in their largest lifeboat, James Caird, across the roughest sea on earth to South Georgia Island.

The crew faces icebergs, huge waves and strong winds. The cold sea water pounded their bodies. They don't have waterproof clothes. The ship rocked like a cork. Pain and cold, these people use buckets to escape when getting water. They hardly suffered from sleeping, eating or drinking for two weeks.

Finally, the james kerr approached the coast of South Georgia, but a hurricane made it almost impossible to land. After several attempts, shackleton landed them safely at a small entrance. Then, he and two others climbed the glacier-covered mountains extending down from the center of the island and reached a whaling station in Norway. A few weeks later, shackleton's attempt was unsuccessful, and shackleton drew a Chilean boat to rescue the people left on Elephant Island-they all survived the ordeal.

2. Sir John Franklin's disastrous copper exploration//1819–1822

As part of Britain's search for the Northwest Passage, its Admiralty organized a basic expedition to find a land route through northern Canada. Sir sir john franklin was responsible for mapping the copper river from Great Slave Lake to the Arctic Ocean. The expedition also included naval surgeon John Richardson, interns George Baker and Robert Hood, seaman John Hepburn, and about two dozen Canadian sailors, as well as aboriginal guides and hunters.

Their arduous journey seems to be cursed from the beginning: Lieutenant Back did miss the boat when the team left England. He caught it at the next port. ) As soon as they arrived in Canada, they went to the Arctic coast by canoe and returned, which was plagued by bad weather, lack of food and fatigue. They ate lichens scraped from rocks. Franklin boiled the leather of his shoes to get nutrition, which earned him the nickname "boot eater".

when Franklin went to an abandoned fortress, the weaker members of the party fell behind. Richardson and Hood realized that one of the sailors had been secretly eating the bodies of their dead colleagues. The voyager murdered Hood; Richardson then shot the voyager to save himself and Hepburn. At the same time, Franklin and Barker found that there was no food at all in the fort. Go back to find their native hunters, while Franklin and others are waiting for almost certain death.

Miraculously, Back and the hunters completed a 1,5-mile journey on foot, and they took care of the survivors and recovered. Only eight of the original 19 members of the expedition survived, including Franklin, who became infamous later.

3. Julianne Koepcke fell from the sky // 1971

After graduating from high school in Lima, Peru, 17-year-old Julianne Koepcke and her mother boarded the remote Panguana biological station founded by their parents. Lightning struck the plane in mid-air and exploded it. Koepcke survived a fall of nearly 1, feet and is still tied to her seat. After the accident, she spent 11 days alone in the Peruvian rainforest.

Koepcke walked through the wet jungle with a broken collarbone and an injured arm. She was ravaged by insect bites and infected with maggots. After nine days of seeking help, she finally came to the logging camp, where the staff provided her with first aid. They transported her to a village and then airlifted her to the hospital. Once recovered, Koepcke, the only survivor of the accident, helped the searcher find the crash site and recovered the bodies of the victims, including her mother's.

Werner Herzog told her story in his 1998 documentary Wings of Hope. Incredibly, Herzog escaped from the same accident; He intended to fly, but changed his plan at the last minute. ) In 211, kopke published her memoir "When I fell from the sky".

4. Ada Blackjack's solo test in Siberia // 1921-1923

In the early 192s, 25-year-old Ada Blackjack was a native of Innu Piater (I? Upiat's widow and a young son, she was hired as a cook and tailor and took part in an ill-conceived expedition to occupy the remote and uninhabited island of Wrangel in northern Siberia for Britain. The expedition was organized by Canadian explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, including blackjack and four male explorers. She didn't want to go, but she was seduced by her salary of 5 dollars.

On September 15th, 1921, Stephenson held a party on the island, and things went downhill from there. This group of people lived on small prey for several months, but their supply decreased and edible wild animals disappeared. They became weak and desperate. Three of them disappeared on a hunting trip. The other died of scurvy, leaving Blackjack alone for five months. She shoots seals with rifles and chews their skins to make leather for boots. After nearly two years in the wasteland, a rescue sailboat finally came from Alaska to take her home-the only survivor of the disastrous mission.

5. Desperate in the Andes//1972

On October 13th, 1972, a small plane carrying Uruguay football team crashed in the Andes after the pilot misjudged the position. Twenty-nine of the 45 passengers and crew survived-but they were alone in the cold at an altitude of 11,5 feet and could not call for help. The white fuselage of the plane blends with the snow, making it invisible to possible rescuers flying overhead. For the next two months, the survivors stayed at the crash site and forced themselves to eat the frozen meat of the dead passengers.

Two rugby players, Nando Parrado and Roberto Cannessa, finally asked for help. Weakened by cold and hunger, they managed to climb to a lower height and found a farmer across the stream. They told the villagers where they came from by fixing the note on a rock and throwing it over the water. Seventy-two days after the crash, 16 survivors were still alive when their tragic experience ended. Their ordeal was called "the miracle of the Andes", and they made a best-selling book and a movie "To Be Alive".

6. Legend of the Dead // 1823

Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear /KenCanning/iStock from Getty Images

Every twist in Hugh Glass's survival story may prove fatal. In 1823, on a fur trade expedition in South Dakota, he was bitten by a grizzly bear and could not live more than an inch. After finally regaining consciousness, Glass, who was seriously injured, found himself abandoned by his comrades-in-arms, without rifles or equipment. He lifted up his broken leg, put on bearskin and began to climb to Fort Kiowa on the Missouri River about 26 miles away. Glass allows maggots to eat the dead meat on his wound to avoid gangrene.

Glass used a promontory named Thunder Hill as a navigation sign, and went south to Cheyenne River, where he built a rough raft and went down the river to reach Fort Kiowa. The journey took six weeks, during which he lived on wild cherries and edible plants.

His trek abroad made Glass a folk hero. The 215 Oscar-winning film "revenant" starring Leonardo DiCaprio is a fictional description of his experience.

7. Sir Douglas Mwuson's trip to the South Pole // 1912-1913

The Far East sled team of Sir Douglas Mwuson, an Australian explorer, set out from Dennison Point in Antarctica in November 1912 and suffered a series of disasters. He and two colleagues, Xavier Mertz, a Swiss explorer, and Belgrave Ninnis, a British army lieutenant, aim to explore the 5-mile terrain east of the main camp of the Oceania Antarctic expedition in the Cape.

The trio and their dog team were troubled by the strong wind, and the crack net and the ice ridge blown by the wind hindered their progress. After 311 miles, the real suffering began. Ninnes and six dogs fell from a deep crack and died. Most people's food, dog food and tents also fell down together. The accident left Mawson and Mertz with extremely limited supplies, forcing them to immediately turn around and start a one-month journey back to the base. They killed the remaining dogs for food. They kept the "best part" for themselves and fed another piece of meat to the surviving dog, but both of them suffered from vitamin A poisoning due to eating the dog's liver. Mohsen's skin falls off like a sheet. Mertz died on January 8.

in February, 1913, haggard and frostbitten, Mosen stumbled back to the base after crossing the glacier alone for 3 days. Despite the hardships, the rest of Australasia Antarctic expedition achieved scientific and technological success, and Mohsen became a national hero. In 1984, his face was printed on the Australian 1 yuan banknote.

8. Three days underwater//213

In May 213, near the coast of Nigeria, Harrison Okene, the chef on board, was in the bathroom when the wind turned the sea into a huge drum and overturned the small tugboat where he worked. Eleven crew members drowned when it sank upside down in nearly 1 feet of water. But Okun managed to swim into an air bag about four square feet, wearing only his underwear. He is still alive, but he is completely trapped at a fatal depth.

After staying in the icy water for more than two days, the oxygen supply was reduced, and Okun heard the banging sound on the deck. A group of South African search and rescue divers have arrived-they are shocked to hear Okun's weak hammering in response.

Finally, they found him and managed to rescue Okun from the shipwreck. Once he was free, Okun was put into a decompression chamber and returned to the ground safely. Experts say that even for an experienced diver, his 6-hour experience can be fatal.

9. Women who survived three shipwrecks //1911-1916

Violet Jessop, a nurse and stewardess on board, experienced three major shipwrecks of the ocean-going ships Olympic, Titanic and Britannic.

In 1911, when Jessop was working on the White Star liner RMS Olympic, this huge passenger ship collided with HMS Hawke near the Isle of Wight. Although both ships suffered considerable damage, the Olympic returned to the port and Jessop disembarked unharmed. Two years later, she accepted the job of RMS Titanic, whose white asterisk is theoretically unsinkable. On April 15, 1912, she escaped from the shipwreck in lifeboat 16.

After surviving the disaster, she worked as a nurse on HMHS Britannic operated by Aegean Sea during World War I.. In 1916, the ship hit a mine buried by a German U-submarine and began to sink. Jessop jumped off the boat, but was sucked under the keel of the boat when it sank. She suffered from skull fracture, but she lived to tell the story of her many deaths at sea.

1. Rescued from a flooded cave//218

In June 218, a men's football team and their coach were trapped in a cave in Thailand for two weeks, and heavy rain flooded their only escape route.

The group entered the vast Tham Luang Nang Non cave network, walked more than two miles to enter the system, and stopped in a room about 3, feet underground. When they were trapped in the cave by the rising flood, they were wearing T-shirts and shorts, and there was no food or water.

It took divers 9 days to find 12 players and their coaches, and 8 days to save them. The rescue work needs thousands of people, including 1 divers, hundreds of rescuers and 1 police helicopters. More than 1 billion liters (264 million gallons) of water must be pumped out of the cave system. Surprisingly, all the boys and their coaches were rescued alive and recovered from their 18-day torture.