Survival in extreme situations requires from a person endurance and unshakable belief that there are no hopeless situations. We have collected 5 stories, the heroes of which managed to survive in the most difficult conditions.
Long flight and 4 days of struggle
The record height, after falling from which a person managed to survive - 10 160 meters. This record is entered in the Guinness Book and belongs to Vesna Vulovic, the only survivor of the plane crash on January 26, 1972. She not only recovered, but also wanted to return to work - she did not have a fear of flying, because she did not remember the very moment of the disaster.
On August 24, 1981, 20-year-old Larisa Savitskaya and her husband flew from their honeymoon on an An-24 plane from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. In the sky, at an altitude of 5220 meters, the plane in which the newlyweds were flying collided with a Tu-16.
Larisa Savitskaya was the only one of 38 people who managed to survive. On a wreck of an aircraft measuring three by four meters, it fell in free fall for 8 minutes. She managed to get to the chair and squeeze into it.
Later, the woman claimed that at that moment she remembered an episode from the Italian film "Miracles still happen" where the heroine survives in similar conditions.
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Rescue work was not carried out very actively. For all the victims of the plane crash, graves have already been dug. Larisa Savitskaya was eventually found last. She lived for three days among the wreckage of the plane and the bodies of the dead passengers. Despite numerous injuries - from concussion to spinal injuries, with broken ribs and a broken arm - Larisa Savitskaya not only survived, but was also able to build herself something like a hut from the wreckage of the fuselage.
When the search plane flew over the crash site, Larisa even waved to the rescuers, but they mistook her for a geologist from a nearby expedition.
Larisa Savitskaya is twice included in the Guinness Book of Records: as a person who survived a fall from a great height, the second time as a person who received the minimum amount of compensation for physical damage in a plane crash - 75 rubles (in 1981 money).
On a small raft
On November 23, 1942, a German submarine torpedoed the British ship Belomond. All members of his crew were killed. Almost all. Sailor Lin Peng managed to survive. He was lucky - during a search on the surface of the water, he found a liferaft on which there was a supply of food.
Lin Peng, of course, understood that food and water would sooner or later run out, so from the first day of his "Robinsonade" he began to prepare equipment for collecting rainwater and fishing. He stretched an awning over the raft, made a fishing line from the threads of rope found on the raft; from a nail and wires from a flashlight - hooks; made of metal from a tin can - a knife with which he cut a caught fish. Interesting fact: Lin Peng could not swim, so he was tied to the raft all the time.
Lin Peng caught fish very little, but took care of its safety - he dried it on ropes stretched over the deck of his "ship". For a hundred days, his diet consisted of one fish and water. Occasionally, seaweed was overboard, the consumption of which prevented Lin Peng from contracting scurvy.
The bitter irony of Lin Peng's record voyage is that he could have been rescued multiple times. One day they didn’t take him on board a cargo ship just because he was Chinese. Then the American Navy noticed him and even threw a rescue buoy at him, but the storm that broke out prevented the Americans from completing the rescue mission. In addition, Lin Peng saw several German submarines, but for obvious reasons did not turn to them for help.
Only in April 1943, Lin Peng noticed that the color of the water had changed, and birds began to appear in the sky every now and then. He realized that he was in the coastal zone, which means that his chances of success increased many times over. On April 5, he was found by Brazilian fishermen, who immediately took him to the hospital. Surprisingly, Lin Peng was able to walk on his own after his journey. He lost only 9 kilograms during the forced "Robinsonade".
Lin Peng's recommendations were included in the survival manual for the British Navy. Lin Peng's story was used in part in the production of the movie Life of Pi.
Well-read cabin boy
"Robinsonade" is the survival of a person alone for a long time in the natural environment. Jeremy Bibs, who lived on the island for 74 years, became the record holder in this "discipline".
In 1911, during a hurricane in the South Pacific Ocean, the English schooner "Beautiful Bliss" sank. Only 14-year-old boy Jeremy Bibs managed to get to the coast and escape on a desert island. The boy was helped by his erudition and love of reading - he knew by heart the novel by Daniel Defoe.
Following the example of the hero of his favorite book, Biebs began to keep a wooden calendar, built a hut, learned to hunt, ate fruit and drank coconut milk. While Biebs lived on the island, there were two world wars in the world, an atomic bomb and a personal computer were created. He knew nothing about it. Found Bibs by accident. In 1985, the crew of a German ship unexpectedly found the Robinson record holder, who had already reached the age of 88, and brought him home.
Father's daughter
In the story about Larisa Savitskaya, we remembered the film “Miracles still happen”. It is based on real events. On December 24, 1971, the Lockheed L-188 Electra of the Peruvian airline LANSA hit a vast thunderstorm area, was struck by lightning, entered the turbulence zone and began to collapse in the air at an altitude of 3.2 kilometers. He fell into the jungle, 500 kilometers from Lima.
The only survivor was 17-year-old schoolgirl Juliana Margaret Kepke. At the time of the fall, the girl was fastened to the chair. Her collarbone was broken, her right arm was injured, and she was blind in one eye. Juliana's survival was helped by the fact that her father was a famous zoologist, who from childhood instilled in his daughter the skills of survival in extreme conditions. Immediately after the crash, putting aside attempts to find her mother among the bodies of the dead, the girl examined the luggage for food, but found only a few sweets - also a result.
Then Juliana found a stream near the place of the fall and went downstream. Only nine days later she was lucky enough to go to the boat on the river bank. The girl treated a wound on her right shoulder with gasoline from a canister, in which at least 40 larvae had already bred.
The boat owners, who turned out to be local loggers, showed up only the next day. Juliana was fed, treated wounds and taken to a hospital in the nearest village.
Alone with the snow
On October 13, 1972, a plane carrying the players of the Old Christians of Montevideo, the Uruguayan rugby team, as well as their relatives and sponsors, crashed in the highlands of the Andes. After the fall, 27 people remained alive. Later, because of the avalanche, 8 more people died, three more died from their wounds.
The Uruguayans realized that there was nowhere to wait for help, 11 days after the accident, when they said on the radio that their search had been stopped and they were declared dead. The dire situation in which the passengers found themselves was aggravated by the fact that supplies were leaving very quickly. Having miraculously survived the crash, they made a difficult decision - to eat the meat of the dead.
The victims were rescued only 72 days after the disaster. Only thanks to the fact that the group equipped three people for the journey who needed to cross the Andes and report what had happened. The most difficult transition was overcome by two. Z
And for 11 days, without equipment and warm clothes, they walked 55 kilometers through the snow-covered Andes and came to a mountain stream, where they met a Chilean shepherd, who informed the authorities about the surviving passengers.