Luck? Chance? Miracles? Willpower? The Mysterious Common Thread in Extreme Survival Stories by Fabian Ommar for The Organic Prepper
The true story of a 17-year-old girl who survived a high-altitude airplane accident over the rain forest is perhaps the quintessential script of the perfect marriage between survival, preparation, and the role of chance in the outcome of SHTF.
Juliane Koepcke is one of the (very) few people in history to ever come out alive from a high-altitude airliner crash. The daughter of two German biology researchers, she was the sole survivor of LANSA Flight 508.
Juliane’s incredible story of the jungle, survival, and angels
On Christmas Eve, 1971, Juliane boarded the Lockheed 188 Electra OB-R-941 with her mother and other 83 passengers and crew to make the one-hour trip from the capital of Peru, Lima, to Pucallpa, a small town deep in the Amazon forest. About midway through, the turboprop entered a storm and got hit by lightning. It immediately plunged, shattering into pieces on the descent. As the aircraft’s cabin burst, Juliane got ejected, strapped to her seat, into the void, and on a 10,000 ft. drop at full speed towards the ground.
Now is your chance to support Gospel News Network.
We love helping others and believe that’s one of the reasons we are chosen as Ambassadors of the Kingdom, to serve God’s children. We look to the Greatest Commandment as our Powering force.
She woke up in the middle of the Peruvian rain forest with a broken collarbone, a twisted ankle, both eyes swollen shut, multiple bruises, and deep cuts all over her small, frail body. It’s so incredible to the point of being almost unbelievable.
For ten (you read that right – ten) days, she wandered alone, amidst the dense, inhospitable jungle, without her glasses and wearing only a dress and one sandal. She finally reached a small village on the riverbanks, almost unconscious yet still walking by her own feet. Here is where she was rescued.
She had just escaped a 2-mile free fall and managed to survive darkness, starvation, poisonous insects and deadly animals, heat and cold, rain and sun, for days – all the while in a state of weakness and severe pain. When the villagers saw Juliane, they thought the limping little blonde girl was some jungle deity coming out of the woods, and she thought those men were angels.
You can read her story here.
There are many other incredible survival stories
Perhaps one of the most famous is that of another airplane accident that happened in South America less than a year after Juliane’s (October 1972). A Uruguayan Air Force Fairchild FH-227D transporting a school rugby team and their families hit a snow-covered mountaintop on the Cordillera de los Andes. The survivors were forced to resort to cannibalism (the ultimate taboo and perhaps the worst nightmare of most humans) to stay alive until rescue came, 72 days later.
Another tale worth mentioning is that of Aron Ralston, the explorer who had to perform self-amputation to escape certain death (by dehydration or worse) after an 800lb dislodged boulder trapped the then-28 years old outdoorsman by the arm for six days in a canyon in Utah, back in 2003.
Then, there’s Anne Frank, the 14-year-old Dutch girl who was forced to spend two years in a small refuge with relatives and strangers, hiding from the Nazi invaders during WW2. Her story – the classic Diary Of A Young Girl (a.k.a. Diary of Anne Frank) is a moving, at the same time haunting and beautiful, account of survival during one of the darkest periods in the history of humankind.
Our very own Selco had to rely on his inner strength and cunning for an entire year to survive a brutal civil war in his hometown during the Balkans conflict in the ’90s. There are many more conflicts and battles that have happened. There’s probably one taking place as you read this. And indeed, even more, that will remain untold, for one reason or another.
What is the common ground in these stories of survival?
Luck, or chance, whichever you choose to call it, is one thing. But, there is something more. Something that is beyond our limited comprehension, let alone our control. Divine intervention, maybe?
This intervention is evident more perhaps in no other instance than the case of Juliane Koepcke. Most other passengers were thrown out of the aircraft just as she was. But the canopies broke her fall. Ten thousand feet. I’m willing to bet that if there were another 300 or even a thousand passengers in that airplane, she’d have been the only survivor all the same.
