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Endurance In Extremity (Tales Of Stubborn Survival Or Persistence)

Castaway's story of survival backed by scientists
Scientists at the University of Hawaii now believe that the incredible story of survival by Jose Salvador Alvarenga - the castaway who spent 13 months at sea - could actually be true
By Harriet Alexander
5:26PM GMT 16 Feb 2014

When a bedraggled and bewildered Jose Salvador Alvarenga washed up on a remote Pacific atoll claiming he had been adrift for 13 months, few people believed his tale.
But now scientists in Hawaii have published new research into ocean currents, which leads them to believe that his story could actually be true.

Mr Alvarenga, 37, said that he had set sail from Mexico to fish for shark in December 2012, and had not seen land since. And Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner from the University of Hawaii used their computer modelling systems to "place" 16 electronic tracers into the ocean from almost exactly the same spot, at the same time that Mr Alvarenga left land.
Mr Maximenko and Mr Hafner charted the positions of their tracers, as part of their research into ocean currents at the International Pacific Research Centre.
[Video of'tracers']

Strong winds off the Mexican coast when the El Salvadorean fisherman set off drove him, and the virtual tracers, quickly off shore. Some of the tracers drifted into currents that lead them to overshoot the Marshall Islands, where Mr Alvarenga washed up. Others have not yet reached the islands.

"Overall, however, the 16 tracers show a remarkably narrow path over this long period of time," the researchers wrote. The tracers passed by Ebon atoll within the space of two degrees latitude or about 120 miles – unusually narrow for such a long journey.
"Alvarenga's claim that he had been adrift for 13 months and that he came from Mexico, therefore, falls well within the model's limits and is consistent with the prevailing pattern of wind and ocean currents during his ordeal," they concluded.

And medical experts have also told The Telegraph that his tale of living off the turtles, fish and seabirds he managed to catch is possible – albeit extremely rare.
"Most experts would say it's surprising, but theoretically possible," said Surgeon Commander Dennis Freshwater, a survival specialist from the Royal Navy.
"If he was a supremely efficient hunter, who was able to cope mentally and managed to get essential vitamins from raw fish, and also sailed through sufficient rainfall to have enough water, then his story could be true.
"But it's certainly a very unusual set of circumstances."

Mr Alvarenga was initially accompanied by a fellow fisherman, 23-year-old Ezequiel Cordoba Rios. But Cordoba Rios did not survive the 8,000 mile trip.
Mr Alvarenga telephoned the father of his late colleague in the days after his rescue, but Nicolas Cordoba Cruz said he still has unanswered questions for the man.
"He asked me for forgiveness because he could not do anything for Ezequiel," he said.

"Ezequiel told him to tell his brothers to look after their mother, and to tell me that he was going to be fine. Maybe authorities think that it is enough to have an explanation of what happened over the phone. But that doesn't hurt as much as the pain I feel of knowing I will not see my son again."

Mr Alvarenga returned to El Salvador on Wednesday, ten days after he was presented to a disbelieving world from the remote Marshall Islands. He was greeted as a returning hero, but was overwhelmed by the attention – uttering a few unaudible words before being whisked off in a wheelchair to hospital. On Sunday he was still there, said to be suffering from post-traumatic stress.

Angel Fredi Sermeno, a psychiatrist, said the fisherman was now terrified of his once-beloved sea, adding that he was suffering from mental exhaustion that often made him burst into tears.

Mr Alvarenga's boat remains on Ebon atoll, where it is currently being used to ferry people between the islands. 8)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... tists.html
 
Teenager stowaway 'survives five-hour flight in wheel of plane'
A 16-year-old boy who ran away from home survives five-hour flight in freezing wheel well of jetliner from California to Hawaii
8:15AM BST 21 Apr 2014

A 16-year-old boy stowed away in the wheel well of a flight from California to Hawaii, surviving the trip halfway across the Pacific Ocean unharmed despite frigid temperatures at 38,000 feet and a lack of oxygen, FBI and airline officials said.
FBI spokesman Tom Simon in Honolulu said on Sunday night that the boy was questioned after being discovered on the tarmac at the Maui airport with no identification.
"Kid's lucky to be alive," Mr Simon said.

He said security footage from the San Jose airport verified that the boy hopped a fence to get to Hawaiian Airlines Flight 45 on Sunday morning. The teen had run away from his family after an argument, Mr Simon said. When the flight landed in Maui, the boy hopped down from the wheel well and started wandering around the airport grounds, he said.
"He was unconscious for the lion's share of the flight," Mr Simon said. The flight lasted about 5.5 hours.

Hawaiian Airlines spokeswoman Alison Croyle said airline personnel noticed the boy on the ramp after the flight arrived and immediately notified airport security.
"Our primary concern now is for the well-being of the boy, who is exceptionally lucky to have survived," Croyle said.

Mr Simon said the boy was medically screened and found to be unharmed.
"Doesn't even remember the flight. It's amazing he survived that."

A call and email message to a Mineta San Jose International Airport spokeswoman were not immediately returned. Officials at Kahului Airport referred questions to the State Department of Transportation, which did not return a phone call seeking comment. A Transportation Security Agency spokesman who declined to be named referred questions to the FBI and airport authorities.

The boy will not be charged and was referred to child protective services, Simon said.

In August, a 13- or 14-year-old boy in Nigeria survived a 35-minute trip in the wheel well of a domestic flight after stowing away. Authorities credited the flight's short duration. Others stowing away in wheel wells have died, including a 16-year-old killed after stowing away aboard a flight from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Boston in 2010 and a man who fell onto a suburban London street from a flight from Angola in 2012.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... plane.html
 
Oooh - just noticed this:

"If he…..sailed through sufficient rainfall to have enough water, then his story could be true,” said Surgeon Commander Dennis Freshwater, a survival specialist from the Royal Navy.

:)
 
"He asked me for forgiveness because he could not do anything for Ezequiel," he said.

I bet some fava beans and a nice Chianti would have helped him down. :err:

edit: "nice" not "fine!" Let's get these things right.
 
Woman's pleas for help on umbrella after six days trapped in crashed car
Badly injured Kristin Hopkins survives a week without food or water after road accident in Colorado leaves her trapped in overturned car
Philip Sherwell By Philip Sherwell
6:54PM BST 06 May 2014

A badly-injured Colorado woman trapped in the mangled wreckage of her car without water or food for several days was rescued after scribbling pleas for help on an umbrella and sticking it through a window.
Kristin Hopkins, 43, a single mother of four who is now recovering from her ordeal in hospital, has had both her feet amputated by doctors, but rescuers described her survival as “remarkable”.
She defied the odds when she even survived the initial accident as her Chevrolet Malibu plunged airborne 120 feet off a winding scenic highway near the town of Fairplay, Colorado, and then rolled another 200 feet down a steep slope.

The car ended up overturned, obscured from sight in a copse of trees, with Ms Hopkins trapped inside, able to hear the passing traffic but with no way of communicating to others.

As the days passed, she came up with her ingenious method of relaying her predicament via barely-legible messages written with a permanent marker on a red-and-white umbrella that she pushed through an open window.
Lt Jim Cravener, a firefighter who was one of the first rescuers on the scene, said the notes were hard to read but appeared to say “Please help doors won’t open”, “Please help, bleeding, need a doctor” and “Six days, no food, no water, please help”.
It is not clear whether the umbrella finally raised the alert, but a passing motorist eventually spotted what they thought was a vehicle. The damage was so bad that the first caller to emergency services said the body of a dead driver appeared to be trapped inside.

Firefighters who scrambled down the hillside were about to break a window to check for a pulse when the woman raised her hand. Ms Hopkins was conscious but extremely weak and dehydrated.
“She was mumbling, in and out of consciousness and was not making a whole lot of sense,” Mr Cravener told The Denver Post. “Just imagine being trapped in the vehicle and listening to the highway nearby. Torturous.”
It was not clear how long Ms Hopkins had spent pinned inside the car. She was last heard from on April 27 and was rescued seven days later on May 4.
“She said she crashed at night,” Mr Cravener said. “We assumed she crashed the night before, but it turned out it had been several days.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... d-car.html
 
I've no idea how that would work.
Unless it's just a crafty trick to get the other people to hold their breath, leaving more oxygen available for the person who came up with the idea?
 
[video]

Climber escapes Nepal crevasse despite broken arm and ribs

American climber Dr John All has relived his experience after falling into a crevasse on a Himalayan mountain in Nepal.
Dr All filmed his efforts to climb out of the hole, which he managed to do despite having five broken ribs and a broken arm.

The climber, 44, from Bowling Green, Kentucky in the US, took six hours to escape from the hole and another three to crawl back to his tent.
He then sent a a text message for help on his satellite messenger which was received by friends who arranged a helicopter airlift.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27538728
 
This will end up in a Simpsons episode.

Irishwoman survives being run over by three NY trains

A 22-year-old Irish immigrant has survived being run over by three subway trains in New York.

Identified as Mary Downey, the Woodlawn, Bronx, resident only suffered a broken shoulder when she fell from a station platform near Times Square at 6am on Sunday.

She somehow managed to catch the attention of the driver of the third train who reportedly moved swiftly and activated the emergency brakes as that train’s third carriage rolled over the helpless Ms Downey.

Police sources told the New York Post that the young woman had been drinking but still managed to scramble to a trough between the rails and the platform, a move which saved her life.

Community leaders in Woodlawn were in the dark about the young Irish lady’s background when contacted by the Irish Examiner yesterday while a local Bronx news television station had also failed to glean any more information than was reported in the Post. ...

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/ir ... 73923.html
 
Begorrah! The luck of the Irish! 8)
 
An old one, but relevant.
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/03/us/dakota-teen-ager-recovers-after-being-frozen-stiff.html

DAKOTA TEEN-AGER RECOVERS AFTER BEING 'FROZEN STIFF'

BISMARCK, N.D., Jan. 2— Jean Hilliard was literally frozen stiff, ''like a piece of meat out of a deep freeze,'' when a friend found her in the snow after a night of 22-below-zero temperatures. But the 19-year-old has made an unusual recovery.

''At worst, I might lose a couple of toes,'' she says. ''I can't explain why she's alive,'' Dr. George Sather, who helped treat the young woman, said today. ''She was frozen stiff, literally. It's a miracle.''

Miss Hilliard was frozen after a midnight automobile accident in rural northwestern Minnesota. When she arrived at the Fosston, Minn., hospital, her skin was too hard to pierce with a hypodermic needle. Her temperature was too low to register on a thermometer. Her face was ashen and her eyes were solid and did not respond to light. Thawing Out Process

''The reaction didn't appear until two or three hours after she started thawing out,'' Dr. Sather said. ''The body was cold, completely solid, just like a piece of meat out of a deep freeze.''

Her ordeal began late Dec. 20 as she was returning to her parents' home near Lengby, Minn. The family car skidded off the road on the edge of the White Earth Indian Reservation and stalled in the windy, frigid weather.

Clad in western boots, a coat and mittens, she began walking to Wally Nelson's home two miles away and collapsed only 15 feet from his door.

Mr. Nelson found her as walked out the door at 7 o'clock the next morning. Her body was so stiff that Mr. Nelson loaded her ''diagonally'' in the back seat of his car and headed for the hospital.

Doctors were unable to give her intravenous feedings because ''she was frozen too solid to penetrate the skin,'' said Dr. Sather's brother, Dr. Edgar Sather.

Her pulse, hardly registering through her frozen skin, was about 12 beats a minute. And her temperature was too low for a thermometer, with a low reading of 88 degrees, 10 degrees below normal. But in several hours, wrapped in an electric heating pad, she began to revive.
 
12 days lost in Siberia: 4yo girl rescued with drone, choppers, dogs (VIDEO)

A missing four-year-old girl was rescued by Russian authorities after spending nearly two weeks wandering in Siberian forests and swamps. An unmanned aerial vehicle, helicopters, search dogs and dozens of people took part in the rescue operation.

Little Karina went missing in Russia’s Yakutia Republic on July 29, but local authorities were only notified on August 3 about the missing child.

The girl’s mother thought her husband had picked her up, while he was in fact fighting local fires with a brigade of firemen and there had been no communication between the two.

Before the child went missing, she was last seen heading off into the forest with her puppy. ...

http://rt.com/news/179248-siberia-girl-drones-rescue/
 
12 days? How the frig did she survive?
What did she eat and what happened to the puppy?
 
ramonmercado said:
Mythopoeika said:
12 days? How the frig did she survive?
What did she eat and what happened to the puppy?

Cough!

You fell into my trap! :lol:
 
Russian woman jumps from 13th floor over unhappy love affair... and survives

A desperately-in-love woman leapt from the 13th floor of a building, severely smashing the roof of a posh Mercedes…and lived. After the impossible plunge she didn’t even lose consciousness and asked only for a glass of water.

Svetlana, 31, jumped from the window in central Moscow on Thursday.

“I was going to the shop when I heard a crazy sound behind my back, like the building collapsed… I turn around and see a woman lying on a car. I immediately called an ambulance,” Valerian, a local witness, told LifeNews TV channel. He says the woman fell out by herself - nobody pushed her, although it was not clear how he could be sure of that. Apparently, it was “unrequited love” which prompted her to take a suicidal dive. ...
http://rt.com/news/187284-woman-jumped-roof-alive/
 
What's even more amazing is that she's done this sort of thing before. :shock:
 
Australian woman safe after 17 days lost in bush

An Australian woman has been found 17 days after she got lost in the bush in northern Queensland with no food.
Shannon Leah Fraser stumbled out of the bush on Wednesday morning, reported local media.
The 30-year-old had gone to the Golden Hole swimming spot with two men, including her partner, when she disappeared on 21 September.
She is now recovering in a hospital and is being treated for infected cuts and severe sunburn.

Ms Fraser's companions first raised the alarm after she got separated from them and failed to return to their vehicle, said Queensland Police.
The mother-of-three's disappearance sparked a search operation involving 25 officers from the police and state emergency services.
Divers combed the pond while officers searched the area on foot and quad bikes. Helicopter searches were conducted as well, with search teams dropping coloured markers.
Family members said Ms Fraser followed these markers out of the bush.

Police said she was eventually found just 30m from where she disappeared. Asked by reporters why teams did not find her, country patrol group Inspector Rhys Newton said her movements had "gone out of what we could reasonably expect a person who is lost in those circumstances". [Yeah, right..?]

A banana farmer who was having his breakfast spotted her when she came out of the bush at 08:00 on Wednesday, and immediately sent her to a nearby hospital, said the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Family members told media that Ms Fraser had survived on creek water, small fish and insects. At one point, she sat in a creek for three days to soothe her cuts and burns.
They also said she had to fend off wild animals such as a cassowary and a freshwater crocodile. :shock:

Ms Fraser, who weighed 90kg previously, reportedly lost about 16kg during her ordeal.
Her partner, Heath Cassady, told the Courier Mail that they had been on a "bender" prior to her disappearance and had gone to Golden Hole to "chill out".
"Her whole body is scarred and peeling, she's been through a lot," Mr Cassady said. "It is amazing she's still alive."

Police are still investigating how she disappeared, but a spokesman told reporters on Thursday that they do not believe that there were any suspicious circumstances.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-29547544
 
A toddler is recovering in hospital after being found unconscious in freezing temperatures in Poland. The two-year-old boy, named in reports as Adam, was discovered lying on the ground in the village of Raclawice, just north of Krakow. He was wearing only pyjamas. Doctors said on Wednesday he had been brought out of a medically-induced coma and his health was improving.

The boy's grandmother has said she did not see him leave her home. Police found the boy on Sunday morning lying unconscious near a river, after apparently wandering outside several hours earlier.

The area's temperature had fallen to -7 C (19 F) overnight, the Associated Press reports. ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30319425
 


Cruise ship passenger who fell overboard is rescued later by another liner


A man who fell overboard from a Royal Caribbean cruise ship off the coast of Cozumel, Mexico, was rescued hours later by a passing Disney Cruise Line ship after a passenger heard him calling for help, ABC News has reported.

The 22-year-old man, who was not identified by authorities, somehow fell off the Royal Caribbean ship during the early-morning hours of 8 January, according to ABC.

Scott Campbell, a passenger on the Disney ship, told ABC that he was on his balcony with his daughter at about 6.30 am when he heard the man calling for help.

“I’ll never forget the scream, ‘Somebody help me,’” Campbell told the network.
etc

Lucky chap. I wonder if we'll find out how he came to fall?
 
P.s. Can @Swifty and I come to your house for tea and can he bring his Twister?


NumanCars.jpg


I'm starting to get cramp but I've found the Twister ..
 
That's the first time I have ever heard of anything else happening. Usually people going overboard in such situations are notoriously hard to find even with a full rescue operation.

I've been on a cruise to Cozumel myself. The waters in that area are usually dead calm and it may be how they could hear him. He was lucky, though - there are reef sharks around Cozumel.
 
Elderly woman lost in desert for 2 weeks survived on rainwater and oranges
Police call Dianna Bedwell's survival "nearly a miracle"
By David Lawler, Washington
4:06PM BST 26 May 2015

A sixty-eight year old woman managed to survive two weeks stranded in the California desert on only oranges, a pie, and rainwater collected in cups.
Dianna Bedwell told authorities that she and her husband Cecil Knutson, 79, became lost after attempting to take a shortcut through the barren terrain. Knutson died before their car was spotted by a person in an off-road vehicle.

The retired school bus drivers from Anaheim spent fifteen days in the desert before Mrs Bedwell was rescued.
Chief Dave Sossaman of the Los Coyotes police said it appeared that the couple had attempted to retrace their path on foot several times, but had been forced to turn back to the disabled vehicle.
Their White Hyundai Sonata was finally found on Monday in the Los Coyotes Indian Reservation northeast of San Diego, and Mrs Bedwell was airlifted to a hospital to be treated for severe dehydration.

Mrs Bedwell, who is diabetic, said she and her husband had just a pie and some oranges to eat, and their only source of water was the rain they managed to collect in cups.
Helicopters had been dispatched to search for them, but when that was unsuccessful their odds of survival looked bleak.
"It would be difficult for someone in good health to survive being in the wild for that long, let alone someone like her," said Lt Ken Nelson of San Diego County police. "It's close to a miracle that she survived."

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-weeks-survived-on-rainwater-and-oranges.html
 
He fell 100 feet off a seaside cliff. Then was bitten by a poisonous snake. As the tide rushed in. While his mother sat at home nearby, wondering why a rescue helicopter was flying overhead.

The string of misfortune may make Brock Leach the unluckiest 14-year-old in England. But he survived his terrifying ordeal, thanks to a dose of good luck, and a lot of help from his older brother.

Brock and his 16-year-old brother Josh were on the cliff of Trebarwith Strand near Tintagel, Cornwall, on Sunday, when Brock slipped on some lichen and fell screaming down the cliff.

Josh was "frightened and shocked," but scrambled down the cliff and found his younger brother conscious and moving on a ledge. The tide was coming in.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...-gets-bitten-by-snake-and-survives/ar-AAdmtRg
 
VIDEO:
Man found alive after being lost for six days in outback

The sister of an Australian pensioner says she is relieved he has been found alive, after he went missing for six days in remote bushland.

Reginald Foggerdy told police he survived by eating ants.
He was rescued on Tuesday after getting lost during a hunting trip in the West Australian Goldfields.
Christine Ogden said she had feared she would never see him again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-34513642
 
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